Bug 46855

Bug: 46855

Impact:

Product:

GemStone/S 64 Bit

Versions:

3.6.8, 3.6.7, 3.6.6, 3.6.5, 3.6.4, 3.6.3, 3.6.2, 3.6.1, 3.6, 3.5.8, 3.5.7, 3.5.6, 3.5.5, 3.5.4, 3.5.3, 3.5.2, 3.5.1, 3.5, 3.4.5, 3.4.4, 3.4.3, 3.4.2, 3.4.1, 3.4, 3.3.9, 3.3.8, 3.3.7, 3.3.6, 3.3.5, 3.3.4, 3.3.3, 3.3.2, 3.3.1, 3.3

Platform:

Fixed In:

3.7

Floating point printing may miss significant digits

In v3.3, the default printing of floating points was changed from using the format string '%.16E' to using the format string '%.16g'.  This allows printing of many floats to be limited to the digits that were of interest, However, this could result in missing precision.

Doubles can have up to 17 significant decimal digits. The E format prints one digit before the decimal point and "precision" digits after, while the g format, however, only prints "precision" digits total, so only 16.

To illustrate, in versions prior to 3.3,
7.6000000000000001 asString ->  7.6000000000000005E00

and in v3.3 and later:
7.6000000000000001 asString ->  7.600000000000001

This change to 16 digits results in printing with insufficient digits to resolve the correct float.

'7.6000000000000001' asNumber
     returns OOP 9360281465526838902
'7.6000000000000005E00' asNumber
     returns OOP 9360281465526838902
'7.600000000000001' asNumber
     returns OOP 9360281465526838918

Workaround

using #asStringLegacy provides the printing as in earlier versions.