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Asked: 2026-05-10T22:10:40+00:00

In my program I have one array with 25 double values 0.04 When I

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In my program I have one array with 25 double values 0.04 When I try to sum these values in a loop I get following results:

0.0 + 0.04 = 0.04 0.04 + 0.04 = 0.08 0.08 + 0.04 = 0.12 0.12 + 0.04 = 0.16 0.16 + 0.04 = 0.2 0.2 + 0.04 = 0.24000000000000002 0.24000000000000002 + 0.04 = 0.28 0.28 + 0.04 = 0.32 0.32 + 0.04 = 0.36 0.36 + 0.04 = 0.39999999999999997 0.39999999999999997 + 0.04 = 0.43999999999999995 0.43999999999999995 + 0.04 = 0.4799999999999999 0.4799999999999999 + 0.04 = 0.5199999999999999 0.5199999999999999 + 0.04 = 0.5599999999999999 0.5599999999999999 + 0.04 = 0.6 0.6 + 0.04 = 0.64 0.64 + 0.04 = 0.68 0.68 + 0.04 = 0.7200000000000001 0.7200000000000001 + 0.04 = 0.7600000000000001 0.7600000000000001 + 0.04 = 0.8000000000000002 0.8000000000000002 + 0.04 = 0.8400000000000002 0.8400000000000002 + 0.04 = 0.8800000000000002 0.8800000000000002 + 0.04 = 0.9200000000000003 0.9200000000000003 + 0.04 = 0.9600000000000003

Why on earth could that happen?!

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1 Answer

  1. The most common storage for floating-point values in programming languages – IEEE singles and doubles – does not have exact representations for most decimal fractions.

    The reason is that they store values in binary floating-point format, rather than decimal floating-point format. The only fractional values which can be represented exactly are those which are sums of negative powers of two. Numbers like:

    • 0.5 (2^-1)
    • 0.125 (2^-3)
    • 0.625 (2^-1 + 2^-3)

    Etc.

    What you are seeing is the fact that representations of numbers like 0.96 are not exactly representable, because they are not expressible as a sum of negative powers of two. Thus, when printed out with full precision as a decimal fraction, they won’t match the original value.

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