[Numpy-discussion] NumPy-Discussion Digest, Vol 38, Issue 11

[Rick White]

The difference between IDL and numpy is that IDL uses single precision  
floats by default while numpy uses doubles.  If you try it with  
doubles in IDL, you will see that it also returns false.

As David Cournapeau said, you should not expect different floating  
point arithmetic operations to give exactly the same result.  It's  
just luck if they do.  E.g., in IDL you'll find that 0.1+0.6 is not  
equal to 0.7.  That's because 0.1 and 0.6 are not exactly  
representable as floats.

On Nov 4, 2009, Jean-Luc Menut wrote:

> Hello all,
>
>
>
> If if define 2 variables a and b by doing the following :
>
> on [5]: a
> Out[5]: array([ 1.7])
>
> In [6]: b=array([0.8])+array([0.9])
>
> In [7]: b
> Out[7]: array([ 1.7])
>
>
> if I test the equality of a and b, instead to obatin True, I have :
> In [8]: a==b
> Out[8]: array([False], dtype=bool)
>
> I know it not related only to numpy but also to python.
> How do you tackle this problem ?
>
> (I also tried on IDL and it works well : I guess it truncate the  
> number).
>
> Thanks ,
>
> Jean-Luc