Hi.

On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 12:48:45PM -0500, Phil Steitz (JIRA) wrote:
> 
>     [ 
> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MATH-475?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=12982118#action_12982118
>  ] 
> 
> Phil Steitz edited comment on MATH-475 at 1/15/11 12:48 PM:
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Very interesting example.  How do you come up with this stuff, Sebb?  :)
> 
> I tend to agree with Gilles' view that if if a and b are not distinguishable 
> as doubles, we don't really have any confidence in the value of abs(a - b), 
> so the short-circuit in the current code is better.  I would say just update 
> the javadoc to make say something like
> 
> "Returns true if the values are indistinguishable as doubles or the 
> difference between them is within the range of allowed error (inclusive)."
> 
>       was (Author: psteitz):
>     Very interesting example.  How do you come up with this stuff, Sebb?  :)
> 
> I tend to agree with Gilles' view that if if a and b are not distinguishable 
> as doubles, we don't really have any confidence in the value of abs(a - b), 
> so the short-circuit in the current code is better.  I would say just update 
> the javadoc to make say something like
> 
> "Returns true if there is no double value strictly between the arguments or 
> the difference between them is within the range of allowed error (inclusive)."

Just to be sure that we agree on the semantics of "equals": The latter
description ("there is no double value strictly between the arguments")
seems more representative of the code. Indeed, 2 successive floating point
numbers _are_ distinguishable, but "equals" will nevertheless return true on
the ground that any real number within the interval could be mapped to
either of the two floating point numbers.


Gilles

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