Comparing two float values

I’ve heard people say that they don’t get expected results when comparing two float numbers…

One of the reasons that I found is this…

const float fSomeFloat = 0.2;
if( fSomeFloat == 0.2 )
{
  printf( "The two floating point numbers are equal, blah\n" );
}

This is bad programming, if condition won’t return true. 😐

The reason being that when you write 0.2 in the editor it’s treated as double instead of a float. So always suffix ‘f’ with floating point numbers.

const float fSomeFloat = 0.2f;
if( fSomeFloat == 0.2f )
{
  printf( "The two floating point numbers are equal, blah\n" );
}

Now if condition will return true, hence printing the above statement. Note that the first ‘f’ when assigning to a float can be avoided since it will be converted to float but the second is mandatory when comparing with another float. But as I said, ( see I am jumping up and down and again and again… ) always suffix ‘f’ with floating point numbers.

The same with longs, unsigned longs. If you write 1, 2, 4, etc in the editor it’s treated as an integer so if you want them to be treated as longs and unsigned longs suffix these numbers with ‘l’ and ‘ul’. With integers you won’t know the difference, with real numbers you will have trouble. So practice this always.

For eg:

const long lSomeLong = 12312L; or 12312l
const unsigned long ulSomeLong = 1231UL; or 1231ul;
const int16 i16Val = 212I16;
const int32 i32Val = 212I32;
const int64 i64Val = 212I64;