php.net |  support |  documentation |  report a bug |  advanced search |  search howto |  statistics |  random bug |  login

go to bug id or search bugs for

Bug #74665 Floats sum return quirk
Submitted: 2017-05-27 17:52 UTC Modified: 2017-05-27 20:12 UTC
Votes:1
Avg. Score:5.0 ± 0.0
Reproduced:1 of 1 (100.0%)
Same Version:0 (0.0%)
Same OS:1 (100.0%)
From: tomasz dot kane at gmail dot com Assigned:
Status: Not a bug Package: Variables related
PHP Version: 7.1.5 OS: Kubuntu
Private report: No CVE-ID: None
View Developer Edit
 [2017-05-27 17:52 UTC] tomasz dot kane at gmail dot com 
Description:
------------
I'm just calculate array values sum.
BTW I know about Floating point precision, but this result...

Test script:
---------------
$foo = [2.45, -1.05, -1.40];
echo array_sum($foo); // 2.2204460492503E-16

// same result when use foreach $sum += $item

Expected result:
----------------
0

Actual result:
--------------
2.2204460492503E-16

Patches

Pull Requests

History

AllCommentsChangesGit/SVN commitsRelated reports
 [2017-05-27 18:16 UTC] jhdxr@php.net
-Status: Open +Status: Not a bug
 [2017-05-27 18:16 UTC] jhdxr@php.net 
Floating point values have a limited precision. Hence a value might 
not have the same string representation after any processing. That also
includes writing a floating point value in your script and directly 
printing it without any mathematical operations.

If you would like to know more about "floats" and what IEEE
754 is, read this:
http://www.floating-point-gui.de/

Thank you for your interest in PHP.
 [2017-05-27 18:18 UTC] jhdxr@php.net 
you may use [bc math](http://jp2.php.net/manual/en/ref.bc.php) to get the precise result.
 [2017-05-27 20:12 UTC] tomasz dot kane at gmail dot com 
Thanks for answer, I'll use bc but...

I can accept result like: 0.99999~ but 2.2204460492503E-16 ?! Madness :-)
 [2017-05-28 09:19 UTC] a at b dot c dot de 
What's wrong with 2.2204460492503E-16? That's 2**-52; about as close to zero as 64-bit IEEE754 floating point can get without actually being zero.

Why you'd expect 0.99999~ (or about roughly 1) instead is baffling.
 [2017-05-28 11:31 UTC] tomasz dot kane at gmail dot com 
Oh, my bad, if the result should be 1 then I can expect 0,999~
In this case more reasonable is something like 0,000000000001 (for humans ;-))
I feel convinced.
 
PHP Copyright © 2001-2025 The PHP Group
All rights reserved. 		Last updated: Mon Apr 28 13:01:33 2025 UTC