Erlang floats and trunc - erlang

R15b on Windows gives:
>trunc(1.9999999999999999999).
2
For that matter, just typing the float returns:
> 1.9999999999999999999.
2.0
AFAIK, the truncate function should just drop the fractional portion (at least that's what I need, anyway). A floor function might also do the trick AFAIK, but the floor implementations I've seen posted online use... you guessed it... trunc.
I'm not nitpicking this, I actually need this to be correct for a program I'm developing.
Any ideas on this?
Thanks.

Your problem is decimal numbers are represented as IEEE compliant binary representation (32, 64 or 128 bit).
If you really need precision you should use other numerical data structures as Binary Coded Decimal or fixed-point arithmetic.
Hope this helps!

if you want to make a TRUNC to float, maybe this one can help:
select substring (convert(varchar(14), CAST (20160303013458 as varchar(14))) , 1 , 8)

Related

When to use V instead of a decimal in Cobol Pic Clauses

Studying for a test right now and can't seem to wrap my head around when to use "V" for a decimal instead of an actual decimal in PIC clauses. I've done some research but can't find anything I understand. Only been learning cobol for about a week, so is there like a rule of thumb here? Thanks for your time.
You use an actual decimal-point when you want to "output" a value which has decimal places, like a report line, a position on a screen, an item in an output file which is going to a "different" system which doesn't understand the format with an implied decimal pace.
That's what the V is, it is an implied decimal place. It tells the compiler where to align results from calculations, MOVEs, whatever. Computer chips, and the machine instructions they support, don't know about actual decimal points for their internal processing.
COBOL is a language with fixed-length fields. The machine instructions don't need to know where the decimal point is (effectively it can deal with everything as integer values) but the compiler does, and the compiler has to do the correct scaling and alignment of results.
Storing on your own files, use V, the implied decimal place.
For data which is to be "human readable" or read by a system which cannot understand your character set, cannot scale what looks like an integer, use an actual decimal-point, . (for computer-readable stuff, you can sometimes use a separate scaling factor, if that is more convenient for the receiving system).
Basically, V for internal, . for external, should be a rule of thumb to get you there.
Which COBOL are you using? I'm surprised it is not covered in your documentation.

Delphi - Comparing float values

I have a function that returns a float value like this:
1.31584870815277
I need a function that returns TRUE comparing the value and the two numbers after the dot.
Example:
if 1.31584870815277 = 1.31 then ShowMessage('same');
Sorry for my english.
Can someone help me? Thanks
Your problem specification is a little vague. For instance, you state that you want to compare the values after the decimal point. In which case that would imply that you wish 1.31 to be considered equal to 2.31.
On top of this, you will need to specify how many decimal places to consider. A number like 1.31 is not representable exactly in binary floating point. Depending on the type you use, the closest representable value could be less than or greater than 1.31.
My guess is that what you wish to do is to use round to nearest, to a specific number of decimal places. You can use the SameValue function from the Math unit for this purpose. In your case you would write:
SameValue(x, y, 0.01)
to test for equality up to a tolerance of 0.01.
This may not be precisely what you are looking for, but then it's clear from your question that you don't yet know exactly what you are looking for. If your needs are specifically related to decimal representation of the values then consider using a decimal type rather than a binary type. In Delphi that would be Currency.
If speed isn't the highest priority, you can use string conversion:
if Copy(1.31584870815277.ToString, 1, 4) = '1.31' then ShowMessage('same');

How do I limit numbers in Lua while keeping precision?

Original Message:
I need to multiply two 64 bit numbers, but Lua is losing precision
with big numbers. (for example 99999999999999999 is shown as
100000000000000000) After multiplying I need a 64 bit solution,
so I need a way to limit the solution to 64 bits. (I know, if the
solution would be precise, I could just use % 0x10000000000000000,
so that would work too)
EDIT: With Lua 5.3 and the new 64 bit integer support, this problem doesn't exist anymore. Neat.
Lua uses double-precision floating points for all math, including integer arithmetic (see http://lua-users.org/wiki/FloatingPoint). This gives you about 53 bits of precision, which (as you've noticed) is less than you need.
There are a couple of different ways to get better precision in Lua. Your best bet is to find the most active such effort and piggy-back off it. In that case, your question has already been answered; check out What is the standard (or best supported) big number (arbitrary precision) library for Lua?
If your Lua distribution has packages for it, the easy answer is lmapm.
If you use LuaJIT in place of Lua, you get access to all C99 built-in types, including long long which is usually 64 bits.
local ffi = require 'ffi'
-- Needed to parse constants that do not fit in a double:
ffi.cdef 'long long strtoll(const char *restrict str, char **restrict endptr, int base);'
local a = ffi.C.strtoll("99999999999999999", nil, 10)
print(a)
print(a * a)
=> 3803012203950112769LL (assuming the result is truncated to 64 bits)

Parse long double from string

I need to parse floating-point literals in C code using OCaml.
OCaml's float type is 64 bit. I have the string of the literal, its numeric value rounded to 64 bits and its kind (float, double or long double).
The problem are literals with a numeric value bigger than 64 bit:
long double literals
float literals with 'f'-suffix for which double rounding errors would occur if they wouldn't have the suffix.
OCaml's arbitrary-precision module can parse rational numbers from strings like "123/123", but not "123.123", "123e123", "0x1.23p-1" like they might appear in C.
Background: I do value analysis of C programs using CIL.
Double literals of any size and float literals with a numeric value that fits into 64 bit are always correctly represented. By rounding from double- to single-precision I can also reproduce double rounding errors.
I wrote my answer in the form of a blog post
To summarize some of the points here: you could interface strtold() and strtof() from OCaml. For the former, you would have to consider how you are going to store the result it produces, since there only is a point if long double is larger than double on your host architecture. There remains the problem that these functions are buggy in one of the most widely used C library. Very slightly buggy, but buggy for exactly the examples that are going to be of interest if you are doing this to study double rounding.
Another way is to write your own function, starting from another post in the blog you refer to.
Finally, the phrase "Even getting single-precision floats right requires me to parse literals with values bigger than 64 bit" that you use in the comments is still a strange way to put it. The intermediate format(s) in which you can parse the representation of a single-precision float before you round it to single-precision have to be lossless, otherwise there will be double rounding. Double rounding may be more or less difficult to exhibit depending on the precision of the lossy intermediate format, but using 80 bits or 128 bits binary floating-point formats is not going to remove the problem, just make it more subtle. In the simple algorithm that I recommend, the intermediate format is a fraction of two multiprecision integers.
I don't see the question in this question :)
Assuming that you need an ocaml parser for "C float literals" - the answer is - write one yourself, it is not very hard and you will have strict control on the implementation details and what "C float literal" actually means.

How to Remove exponent from formatted float in Delphi

Given a double value like 1.00500000274996E-8, how do I convert it to it's non scientific format with a maximum number of digits after the decimal point - in this case with 8 digits it would be 1.00500000?
The conversion should not pad with zeros, so 2007 would come out as 2007, and 2012.33 and 2012.33.
I've tried lots of combinations using Format, FormatFloat, FloatToStrF but can't quite seem to hit the jackpot. Many thanks for any help.
Edit: I should clarify that I am trying to convert it to a string representation, without the Exponent (E) part.
FormatFloat('0.######################', 1.00500000274996E-8) should do the trick.
Output is: 0,0000000100500000274996
It will not output more digits than absolutely necessary.
See John Herbster's Exact Float to String Routines in CodeCentral. Perhaps not exactly what youre after but might be good starting point... CC item's description:
This module includes
(a) functions for converting a floating binary point number to its *exact* decimal representation in an AnsiString;
(b) functions for parsing the floating point types into sign, exponent, and mantissa; and
(c) function for analyzing a extended float number into its type (zero, normal, infinity, etc.)
Its intended use is for trouble shooting problems with floating point numbers.
His DecimalRounding routines might be of intrest too.

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