math error

[Marshall Dudley]

The code:

$weight = 5.03;
my $gross = int($weight);
my $frac = $weight - $gross;
print "$frac\n";

Should print the decimal part of .03, but gives this instead:

0.0300000000000 002

What am I doing wrong?

Marshall

[Jim Gibson]

In article <43************ ***@king-cart.com>, Marshall Dudley
<md*****@king-cart.com> wrote:

The code:

$weight = 5.03;
my $gross = int($weight);
my $frac = $weight - $gross;
print "$frac\n";

Should print the decimal part of .03, but gives this instead:

0.0300000000000 002

What am I doing wrong?

You are expecting the number 5.03 to be stored precisely in
floating-point binary format, which it cannot.

See 'perldoc -q numbers'

Use
printf "%.2f\n", $frac;

FYI: this newsgroup is defunct. Try comp.lang.perl. misc in the future.
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[Jürgen Exner]

Marshall Dudley wrote:
[code snipped]

Should print the decimal part of .03, but gives this instead:

0.0300000000000 002

What am I doing wrong?

Using floating point arithmetic for precision calculations?
You must have missed the first lesson in computer numerics: "Thou shalt not
use floating point if expecting accurate results."

Anyway, see "perldoc -q 999" and DejaNews/Google for numerous discussions
about this topic.

jue