[fpc-pascal] Order of Precedence: FPC/Delphi vs Java

[Santiago A.]

El 06/10/18 a las 20:48, Graeme Geldenhuys escribió:
> On 03/10/18 20:05, Santiago A. wrote:
>> I don't know why you want to compare two floats, but you'd better use
>> currency type.
> I fully understand that. We do financial calculation up to 6 decimal
> places, so can't use Currency data type.
6 decimals, no currency that's a problem ;-)
>
> Our real issue was the different results using the same calculation. I
> thought order of precedence would apply in all cases, but couldn't fully
> understand the outcomes we received. But after reading Florian and
> Bernd's replies I now understand. The other issue was that our
> application is 32-bit, where 64-bit would not have had this issue.
With 64 bits, reaching a 6 decimals error is more difficult, but it is 
still an issue. In your example you have done a couple of operations and 
you have got an error of 1E-11. After a hundred of operations, you could 
reach the fatal 1E-6.
Once I had a problem like that, or integers, or floats. The best is 
rounding a lot in intermediate results, rounding before comparing and 
specify clearly the order:
i.e. if you add a list of items with a discount, you can get different 
results if you apply the discount to each item and sum, than if you sum 
the items and apply the discount to the total. will the difference be 
less then 1E-6? Depend on the numbers, and how many items you sum. So 
you must specify : "Discount will be applied to each item".
64bits is a lot of precision, but don't be overconfident, even in such 
case errors can skyrocket with divisions with small divisors and/or a 
lot of operations. Comparing to zero is always dangerous, you'd better 
round the number to 6 decimals before comparing.

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Saludos
Santiago A.