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From: russotto@eng.umd.edu (Matthew T. Russotto)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Why can't the Mac add?
Message-ID: <1990Sep24.222737.20164@eng.umd.edu>
Date: 24 Sep 90 22:27:37 GMT
References: <45060@apple.Apple.COM>
Sender: news@eng.umd.edu (The News System)
Organization: College of Engineering, Maryversity of Uniland, College Park
Lines: 21

In article <45060@apple.Apple.COM> das@Apple.COM (David Shayer) writes:
>I was running this simple program.
>
>main ()
>{
>	float	x; 
>	
>	for (x=0.0;x!=10.0;x+=0.2)
>		printf ("x=%f \n",x);
>}
>
>
>So my question is, why can't the Mac do simple math?
>What's going on here?  Is SANE insane?

0.2 is a repeating fraction in binary.  There is no way to express it exactly
except with BCD (which SANE doesn't support).  Thus, no matter what the
precision, you can't win.
--
Matthew T. Russotto	russotto@eng.umd.edu	russotto@wam.umd.edu
      .sig under construction, like the rest of this campus.