53 * .01 = .531250

Question

I'm converting a string date/time to a numerical time value. In my case I'm only using it to determine if something is newer/older than something else, so this little decimal problem is not a real problem. It doesn't need to be seconds precise. But still it has me scratching my head and I'd like to know why..

My date comes in a string format of @"2010-09-08T17:33:53+0000". So I wrote this little method to return a time value. Before anyone jumps on how many seconds there are in months with 28 days or 31 days I don't care. In my math it's fine to assume all months have 31 days and years have 31*12 days because I don't need the difference between two points in time, only to know if one point in time is later than another.

-(float) uniqueTimeFromCreatedTime: (NSString *)created_time {
float time;
    if ([created_time length]>19) {
      time = ([[created_time substringWithRange:NSMakeRange(2, 2)]floatValue]-10) * 535680; // max for 12 months is 535680.. uh oh y2100 bug!
      time=time + [[created_time substringWithRange:NSMakeRange(5, 2)]floatValue] * 44640; // to make it easy and since it doesn't matter we assume 31 days
      time=time + [[created_time substringWithRange:NSMakeRange(8, 2)]floatValue] * 1440;
      time=time + [[created_time substringWithRange:NSMakeRange(11, 2)]floatValue] * 60;
      time=time + [[created_time substringWithRange:NSMakeRange(14, 2)]floatValue];
      time = time + [[created_time substringWithRange:NSMakeRange(17, 2)]floatValue] * .01;
      return time;
    }
    else {
      //NSLog(@"error - time string not long enough");
      return 0.0;
    }
}

When passed that very string listed above the result should be 414333.53, but instead it is returning 414333.531250.

When I toss an NSLog in between each time= to track where it goes off I get this result:

time 0.000000
time 401760.000000
time 413280.000000
time 414300.000000
time 414333.000000
floatvalue 53.000000
time 414333.531250
Created Time: 2010-09-08T17:33:53+0000 414333.531250

So that last floatValue returned 53.0000 but when I multiply it by .01 it turns into .53125. I also tried intValue and it did the same thing.

Answer 1

Welcome to floating point rounding errors. If you want accuracy two a fixed number of decimal points, multiply by 100 (for 2 decimal points) then round() it and divide it by 100. So long as the number isn't obscenely large (occupies more than I think 57 bits) then you should be fine and not have any rounding problems on the division back down.

EDIT: My note about 57 bits should be noted I was assuming double, floats have far less precision. Do as another reader suggests and switch to double if possible.

Answer 2

This is from a classic floating point error resulting from how the number is represented in bits. First, use double instead of float, as it is quite fast to use on modern machines. When the result really really matters, use the decimal type, which is 20x slower but 100% accurate.

Answer 3

IEEE floats only have 24 effective bits of mantissa (roughly between 7 and 8 decimal digits). 0.00125 is the 24th bit rounding error between 414333.53 and the nearest float representation, since the exact number 414333.53 requires 8 decimal digits. 53 * 0.01 by itself will come out a lot more accurately before you add it to the bigger number and lose precision in the resulting sum. (This shows why addition/subtraction between numbers of very different sizes in not a good thing from a numerical point of view when calculating with floating point arithmetic.)

Answer 4

You could try multiplying all your constants by by 100 so you don't have to divide. The division is what's causing the problem because dividing by 100 produces a repeating pattern in binary.

Answer 5

You can create NSDate instances form those NSString dates using the +dateWithString: method. It takes strings formatted as YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS ±HHMM, which is what you're dealing with. Once you have two NSDates, you can use the -compare: method to see which one is later in time.