basic math functions - strange result (newbie in xslt)

Nicolas Stern · Aug 13, 2003

Hi

Can anyone explain me the following behavior with basic math functions
?

I'm doing additions and substractions in an xsl sheet, and don't get
the expected results.

my xml file: (dummy.xml)
-------------------------------
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="t2.xslt"?>
<ROWSET>
<ROW>dummy</ROW>
</ROWSET>
-------------------------------
the stylesheet: (t2.xslt)
-------------------------------
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:variable name="var1" select="2.4" />
<xsl:variable name="var2" select="0.2" />
<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<ul>
<li><xsl:value-of select="$var1 + $var2" /></li>
<li><xsl:value-of select="$var1 - $var2" /></li>
</ul>
<hr />

</html>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
-------------------------------
the output: (using msxsl dummy.xml t2.xslt
-------------------------------
< h t m l >
< u l >
< l i > 2 . 6 < / l i >
< l i > 2 . 1 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 7 < / l i >
< / u l >
< h r >
< / h t m l >
-------------------------------

I would need the result of $var1 - $var2 to be = 2.2, as expected

The behavior is identical when using the parser in xmlspy.

Any hint ?

thanks in advance

Nicolas

Aleksi Kallio · Aug 13, 2003

<xsl:variable name="var2" select="0.2" />
<li><xsl:value-of select="$var1 + $var2" /></li>
<li><xsl:value-of select="$var1 - $var2" /></li>
the output: (using msxsl dummy.xml t2.xslt

This kind of behaviour is very common. Answer is nearly correct, but not
exactly, because XSLT uses double precision (64-bit) floating point
numbers to do the calculation. For more details on floating point
rounding errors, see: http://www.python.org/doc/tut/node14.html

If you need exact results, you need to use fixed point arithmetic. I
don't know if this is possible (in any easy way) in XSLT.

But... According to my experience it is very strange that this error
happens with such small numbers. Double precision is after all a darn
lot of precision, it really should not produce this kind of error. Is
there something flawed with the implementation of those transformers?

Dimitre Novatchev · Aug 13, 2003

Aleksi Kallio said:
This kind of behaviour is very common. Answer is nearly correct, but not
exactly, because XSLT uses double precision (64-bit) floating point
numbers to do the calculation. For more details on floating point
rounding errors, see: http://www.python.org/doc/tut/node14.html

If you need exact results, you need to use fixed point arithmetic. I
don't know if this is possible (in any easy way) in XSLT.

But... According to my experience it is very strange that this error
happens with such small numbers. Double precision is after all a darn
lot of precision, it really should not produce this kind of error. Is
there something flawed with the implementation of those transformers?

Using any programming language on any computer you get:

0.33333333....

for 1/3

Is there anything flawed with all computers?

No, this is a "flaw" with their (binary) numeric system or our (decimal)
numeric system.

The answer is simple math -- there are numbers that cannot be represented
with finite number of digits in any (or most) given number system.

Therefore, the number representation is an approximation of the exact value,
so are results of calculations.

In order to get a better looking result, one can use the format-number()
function and thus round the number to the required precision, e.g.:

format-number(2.4 - 0.2, "#0.00")

=====
Cheers,

Dimitre Novatchev.
http://fxsl.sourceforge.net/ -- the home of FXSL

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basic math functions - strange result (newbie in xslt)

Nicolas Stern

Aleksi Kallio

Dimitre Novatchev

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