Question about comparing floats and doubles for equality

[David Ritter <ri...@roguewave.com>]

In reviewing the following file for some information on how to compare
floats and doubles for equality I had some questions I wanted to ask the
list.

http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/incubator/stdcxx/trunk/tests/src/valcmp.cpp
?view=markup

I found the methods rw_fltcmp and rw_dblcmp that are implemented in
valcmp.cpp but I have a few questions about them.

In rw_fltcmp() the method starts off with the following block of code:

#if _RWSTD_SHRT_SIZE == _RWSTD_INT_SIZE
    typedef short IntT;
    const IntT imin = _RWSTD_SHRT_MIN;
#elif _RWSTD_FLT_SIZE == _RWSTD_INT_SIZE
    typedef int IntT;
    const IntT imin = _RWSTD_INT_MIN;
#elif _RWSTD_FLT_SIZE == _RWSTD_LONG_SIZE
    typedef long IntT;
    const IntT imin = _RWSTD_LONG_MIN;
#elif _RWSTD_FLT_SIZE == _RWSTD_LLONG_SIZE
    typedef _RWSTD_LONG_LONG IntT;
    const IntT imin = _RWSTD_LLONG_MIN;
#else

Why is the size of a short being compared to the size of an int when all
the other comparisons are made against float?  As a side note, that
first check seems to be missing from rw_dblcmp, is it unnecessary there?

My other question relates to rw_dblcmp.  In the method there appears to
be two different ways of checking the equality, depending on whether the
size of a long long is less than the size of a double.  Is that a
performance optimization?

Thank you for any help/insight you can provide.

Dave Ritter

Re: Question about comparing floats and doubles for equality

[Martin Sebor <se...@roguewave.com>]

David Ritter wrote:
> In reviewing the following file for some information on how to compare
> floats and doubles for equality I had some questions I wanted to ask the
> list.
> 
> http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/incubator/stdcxx/trunk/tests/src/valcmp.cpp
> ?view=markup
> 
> I found the methods rw_fltcmp and rw_dblcmp that are implemented in
> valcmp.cpp but I have a few questions about them.
> 
> In rw_fltcmp() the method starts off with the following block of code:
> 
> #if _RWSTD_SHRT_SIZE == _RWSTD_INT_SIZE
>     typedef short IntT;
>     const IntT imin = _RWSTD_SHRT_MIN;
> #elif _RWSTD_FLT_SIZE == _RWSTD_INT_SIZE
>     typedef int IntT;
>     const IntT imin = _RWSTD_INT_MIN;
> #elif _RWSTD_FLT_SIZE == _RWSTD_LONG_SIZE
>     typedef long IntT;
>     const IntT imin = _RWSTD_LONG_MIN;
> #elif _RWSTD_FLT_SIZE == _RWSTD_LLONG_SIZE
>     typedef _RWSTD_LONG_LONG IntT;
>     const IntT imin = _RWSTD_LLONG_MIN;
> #else
> 
> Why is the size of a short being compared to the size of an int when all
> the other comparisons are made against float?  As a side note, that
> first check seems to be missing from rw_dblcmp, is it unnecessary there?

I suspect the first conditional has a couple of typos and should
instead read: #if _RWSTD_FLT_SIZE == _RWSTD_SHRT_SIZE. Let me fix
it. The rw_dblcmp case makes the assumption that doubles are at
least as big as ints so it doesn't bother to check short. The
same assumption would probably be equally as safe in rf_fltcmp
(i.e., it's unlikely that sizeof(short) == sizeof(float)).

> 
> My other question relates to rw_dblcmp.  In the method there appears to
> be two different ways of checking the equality, depending on whether the
> size of a long long is less than the size of a double.  Is that a
> performance optimization?

No, it's the next best thing to the integer hack in the absence
of a integer type that's as wide as long double :) It might be
possible to use the integer trick for long doubles that are so
close that they differ only in their low words and their high
words are the same.

Martin

PS The integer hack assumes IEEE 754 format of floating point
values. It most likely won't work with any other format (such
as the IBM OS/360 hex format).