From: "Martin Ambuhl" Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp Subject: Re: poor fp precision Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1998 13:56:35 -0400 Organization: Honors Bridge Club Lines: 19 Message-ID: <6gb5gb$dmd@news-central.tiac.net> References: <35289C54 DOT 7FED AT hotmail DOT com DOT no DOT spam> NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.61.81.120 To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp Precedence: bulk Spider wrote in message <35289C54 DOT 7FED AT hotmail DOT com DOT no DOT spam>... 2.390000 238.999987 ^^^^^^^^^^ Isnīt this very poor????? I mean, if floats have a 6 decimals precision, one would expect an error less than exp(-6), right?? Huh? The error in 13/290000000 is 4.48276e-08=pow(10.,-7.348455) The error in .5/100000 is 5e-06=pow(10.,-5.301030) The error in .5/999999 is 5.00001e-07=pow(10.,-6.301030) So 6 decimals precision requires at most that the error be less than .5/999999. Your example gives 7.348455 - 6.301030 = 1.047425 MORE digits of precision.