]> On Tuesday, Dec 10, 2002, at 00:04 Europe/Paris, jeanmarc.eber@lexifi.com wrote: > caml 3.06+1: [string_of_float loses precision on floating-point numbers] In the current working version (3.06+18), the precision used by string_of_float has been increased to 17 digits. I *think* this is enough to represent all the double-precision floating-point numbers: Objective Caml version 3.06+18 (2002-11-07) # let f = 1. /. 86400.;; val f : float = 1.1574074074074073e-05 # let s = string_of_float f;; val s : string = "1.1574074074074073e-05" # let f1 = float_of_string s;; val f1 : float = 1.1574074074074073e-05 # f1 = f;; - : bool = true # f1 -. f;; - : float = 0. However, it has the unfortunate side-effect of revealing this awful truth about FP numbers: many "interesting" numbers are impossible to represent in floating-point. For example: # 0.1;; - : float = 0.10000000000000001 There is no floating-point number equal to 0.1 and the best approximation you can get is 0.10000000000000001. I expect this will quickly become a much-used FAQ entry... I don't know if we will keep this change for the next release of O'Caml. But you can always use (Printf.sprintf "%.17g") instead of string_of_float, and you'll get all the digits, significant or not. -- Damien ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners