I'm in desperate need of help here. The problem is simple, Houdini is giving some wildly inaccurate results with simple math problems. I first ran into this when using the modulo operator, but now I'm noticing it with stuff as basic as addition and subtraction. There are two things I've observed with this issue. Firstly, the problem when the numbers are variables.Secondly, the issues appears completely random. I can't find any patterns or anything.

One example is the equation: (vspacing*vpt)+voffset) - vpos.

(vspacing*vpt)+voffset) gives the correct result. vpos, is correct. But when I subtract vpos from (vspacing*vpt)+voffset) the result is simply not as it should be. For example, when the answer should be 0, the result is actually 7.45058e-9.

This is really screwing me up. I've trying trying to write some simple tools in VEX but this problem is making half the stuff I want to do absolutely impossible. Can anyone help? Does anyone know why this is happening?

What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html [docs.oracle.com]

another helpful article on the matter:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_of_significance [en.wikipedia.org]

Never even heard of floating point arithmetic before. Thanks for those articles!

Moin,

I switched the (work in progress, to be seriously edited later on) chapter on “Floating Points” in my “Learn to program if that is the only thing you never ever wanted to do in your life” book that I am creating with my Patr(e)ons …

https://www.patreon.com/posts/15093066 [www.patreon.com]

Marc