JavaScript toString limits - javascript

So my problem is this, I'm writing a program that checks if number is even or odd without division. So I decided to take the number, turn it into a String with the
number.toString()
method. The problem I'm having is that if you put a number that is about 17 or more digits long the string is correct for about the first 17 digits then it's just 0's and sometimes 2's. For example,
function toStr (number)
{
return number.toString(10);
}
console.log(toStr(123456789123456789));
prints,
123456789123456780
any ideas?

The problem has nothing to do with strings or your function at all. Try going to your console and just entering the expression 123456789123456789 and pressing return.
You will likewise obtain 123456789123456780.
Why?
The expression 123456789123456789 within the JavaScript language is interpreted as a JavaScript number type, which can only be represented exactly to a certain number of base two significant figures. The input number happens to have more significant digits when expressed in base two than the number of base two significant figures available in JavaScript's representation of a number, and so the value is automatically rounded in base two as follows:
123456789123456789 =
110110110100110110100101110101100110100000101111100010101 (base two)
123456789123456780 =
110110110100110110100101110101100110100000101111100001100 (base two)
Note that you CAN accurately represent some numbers larger than a certain size in JavaScript, but only those numbers with no more significant figures in base two than JavaScript has room for. For instance, 2 times a very large power of 10, which would have only one significant figure in base two.
If you are designing this program to accept user input from a form or dialog box, then you will receive the input as a string. You only need to check the last digit in order to determine if the input number is odd or even (assuming it is indeed an integer to begin with). The other answer has suggested the standard way to obtain the last character of a string as well as the standard way to test if a string value is odd or even.

If you go beyond Javascript's max integer size (9007199254740992) you are asking for trouble: http://ecma262-5.com/ELS5_HTML.htm.
So to solve this problem, you must treat it as a string only. Then extract the last digit in the string and use it to determine whether the number is even or odd.
if(parseInt(("123456789123456789").slice(-1)) % 2)
//odd
else
//even

It's a 64-bit floating point number, using the IEEE 754 specification. A feature of this spec is that starting at 2^53 the smallest distance between two numbers is 2.
var x = Math.pow(2, 53);
console.log( x == x + 1 );
This difference is the value of the unit in the last place, or ULP.
This is similar in principle to trying to store fractional values in integral types in other languages; values like .5 can't be represented, so they are discarded. With integers, the ULP value is always 1; with floating point, the ULP value depends on how big or small the number you're trying to represent.

Related

facing an issue with parseFloat when input is more than 16 digits

I am facing weird issued.
parseFloat(11111111111111111) converts it to 11111111111111112.
I noticed that it works fine till length is 16 but rounds off higher when input length is > 16.
I want to retain the original value passed in parseFloat after it is executed.
Any help?
Integers (numbers without a period or exponent notation) are considered accurate up to 15 digits.
More information here
Numbers in javascript are represented using 64 bit floating point values (so called doubles in other languages).
doubles can hold at most 15/16 significant digits (depends on number magnitute). Since range of double is 1.7E+/-308 some numbers can only be aproximated by double, in your case 11111111111111111 cannot be represented exactly but is aproximated by 11111111111111112 value. If this sounds strange then remember that 0.3 cannot be represented exactly as double too.
double can hold exact integers values in range +/-2^53, when you are operating in this range - you may expect exact values.
Javascript has a constant, Number.MAX_SAFE_INTEGER which is the highest integer that can be exactly represented.
Safe in this context refers to the ability to represent integers exactly and to correctly compare them. For example, Number.MAX_SAFE_INTEGER + 1 === Number.MAX_SAFE_INTEGER + 2 will evaluate to true, which is mathematically incorrect.
The value is 9007199254740991 (2^53 - 1) which makes a maximum of 15 digits safe.
JavaScript now has BigInt
BigInt is a built-in object that provides a way to represent whole numbers larger than 253 - 1, which is the largest number JavaScript can reliably represent with the Number primitive.
BigInt can be used for arbitrarily large integers.
As you can see in the following blog post, JavaScript only supports 53 bit integers.
if you type in the console
var x = 11111111111111111
and then type
x
you'll get
11111111111111112
This has nothing to do with the parseFloat method.
There's also a related question here about working with big numbers in JavaScript.
Try using the unary + operator.
Like this + ("1111111111111111") + 1 = 1111111111111112

JavaScript Math.floor: how guarantee number will round down?

I want to normalize an array so that each value is
in [0-1) .. i.e. "the max will never be 1 but the min can be 0."
This is not unlike the random function returning numbers in the same range.
While looking at this, I found that .99999999999999999===1 is true!
Ditto (1-Number.MIN_VALUE) === 1 But Math.ceil(Number.MIN_VALUE) is 1, as it should be.
Some others: Math.floor(.999999999999) is 0
while Math.floor(.99999999999999999) is 1
OK so there are rounding problems in JS.
Is there any way I can normalize a set of numbers to lie in the range [0,1)?
It may help to examine the steps that JavaScript performs of each of your expressions.
In .99999999999999999===1:
The source text .99999999999999999 is converted to a Number. The closest Number is 1, so that is the result. (The next closest Number is 0.99999999999999988897769753748434595763683319091796875, which is 1–2–53.)
Then 1 is compared to 1. The result is true.
In (1-Number.MIN_VALUE) === 1:
Number.MIN_VALUE is 2–1074, about 5e–304.
1–2–1074 is extremely close to one. The exact value cannot be represented as a Number, so the nearest value is used. Again, the nearest value is 1.
Then 1 is compared to 1. The result is true.
In Math.ceil(Number.MIN_VALUE):
Number.MIN_VALUE is 2–1074, about 5e–304.
The ceiling function of that value is 1.
In Math.floor(.999999999999):
The source text .999999999999 is converted to a Number. The closest Number is 0.99999999999900002212172012150404043495655059814453125, so that is the result.
The floor function of that value is 0.
In Math.floor(.99999999999999999):
The source text .99999999999999999 is converted to a Number. The closest Number is 1, so that is the result.
The floor function of 1 is 1.
There are only two surprising things here, at most. One is that the numerals in the source text are converted to internal Number values. But this should not be surprising. Of course text has to be converted to internal representations of numbers, and the Number type cannot perfectly store all the infinitely many numbers. So it has to round. And of course numbers very near 1 round to 1.
The other possibly surprising thing is that 1-Number.MIN_VALUE is 1. But this is actually the same issue: The exact result is not representable, but it is very near 1, so 1 is used.
The Math.floor function works correctly. It never introduces any error, and you do not have to do anything to guarantee that it will round down. It always does.
However, since you want to normalize numbers, it seems likely you are going to divide numbers at some point. When you divide, there may be rounding problems, because many results of division are not exactly representable, so they must be rounded.
However, that is a separate problem, and you have not given enough information in this question to address the specific calculations you plan to do. You should open a separate question for it.
Javascript will treat any number between 0.999999999999999994 and 1 as 1, so just subtract .000000000000000006.
Of course that's not as easy as it sounds, since .000000000000000006 is evaluated as 0 in Javascript, so you could do something like:
function trueFloor(x)
{
x = x * 100;
if(x > .0000000000000006)
x = x - .0000000000000006;
x = Math.floor(x/100);
return x;
}
EDIT: Or at least you'd think you could. Apparently JS casts .99999999999999999 to 1 before passing it to a function, so you'd have to try something like:
trueFloor("0.99999999999999999")
function trueFloor(str)
{
x=str.substring(0,9) + 0;
return Math.floor(x); //=> 0
}
Not sure why you'd need that level of precision, but in theory, I guess it works. You can see a working fiddle here
As long as you cast your insanely precise float as a string, that's probably your best bet.
Please understand one thing: this...
.999999999999999999
... is just a Number literal. Just as
.999999999999999998
.999999999999999997
.999999999999999996
...
... you see the pattern.
How JavaScript treats these literals is completely another story. And yes, this treatment is limited by the number of bits that can be used to store a Number value.
The number of possible floating point literals is infinite by definition - no matter how small is the range set for them. For example, take the ones shown above: how many of numbers very close to 1 you may express? Right, it's infinite: just keep appending 9 to the line.
But the container for each Number value is quite finite: it has 64 bits. That means, it can store 2^64 different values (Infinite, -Infinite and NaN among them) - and that's all.
You want to work with such literals anyway? Use Strings to store them, not Numbers - and some BigMath JS library (take your pick) to work with those values - as Strings, again.
But from your question it looks like you're not, as you talked about array of Numbers - Number values, that is. And in no way there can be .999999999999999999 stored there, as there is no such Number value in JavaScript.

Unexpected value on multiplication in javascript [duplicate]

There is some problem, i can't understand anyway.
look at this code please
<script type="text/javascript">
function math(x)
{
var y;
y = x*10;
alert(y);
}
</script>
<input type="button" onclick="math(0.011)">
What must be alerted after i click on button?
i think 0.11, but no, it alerts
0.10999999999999999
explain please this behavior.
thanks in advance
Ok. Let me try to explain it.
The basic thing to remember with floating point numbers is this: They occupy a limited amount of bits and try to represent the original number using base-2 arithmetic.
As you know, in base-2 arithmetic integers are represented by the powers of 2 that they contain. Thus, 6 would be represented as 4 + 2, ie. in binary as 110.
In order to understand how fractional numbers are represented, you have to think about how we represent fractional numbers in our decimal system. The fractional part of numbers (for example 0.11) is represented as multiples of inverse powers of 10 (since the base is 10). Thus 0.11 is actually 1/10 + 1/100. As you can appreciate, this is not powerful enough to represent all fractional numbers in a limited number of digits. For example, 1/3 would be 0.333333.... in a never ending fashion. If we had only 32 digits of space to write the number down, we would end up having only an approximation to the original number, 0.33333333333333333333333333333333. This number, for example, would give 0.99999999999999999999999999999999 if it was multiplied by 3 and not 1 as you would have expected.
The situation is similar in base-2. Each fractional number would be represented as multiples of inverse powers of 2. Thus 0.75 (in decimal) (ie 3/4) would be represented as 1/2 + 1/4, which would mean 0.11 (in base-2). Just as base 10 is not capable enough to represent every fractional number in a finite manner, base-2 cannot represent all fractional numbers given a limited amount of space.
Now, try to represent 0.11 in base-2; you start with 11/100 and try to find an inverse power of 2 that is just less than this number. 1/2 doesn't work, 1/4 neither, nor does 1/8. 1/16 fits the bill, so you mark a 1 in the 4th place after the decimal point and subtract 1/16 from 11/100. You are left with 19/400. Now try to find the next power of 2 that fits the description. 1/32 seems to be that one, mark the 5th place after the point and subtract 1/32 from 19/400, you get 13/800. Next one is 1/64 and you are left with 1/1600 thus the next one is all the way up at 1/2048, etc. etc. Thus we got as far as 0.00011100001 but it goes on and on; and you will see that there always is a fraction remaining. Now, I didn't go through the whole calculation, but after you have put in 32 binary digits after the dot you will still probably have some fraction left (and this is assuming that all of the 32 bits of space is spent representing the decimal part, which it is not). Thus, I am sure you can appreciate that the resulting number might differ from its actual value by some amount.
In your case, the difference is 0.00000000000000001 which is 1/100000000000000000 = 1/10^17 and I am sure that you can see why you might have that.
this is because you are dealing with floating point, and this is the expected behavior of floating point math.
what you need to do is format that number.
see this java explanation which also applies here if you want to know why this is happening.
in javascript all numbers are represented as 64bit floats, so you will run into this sort of thing often.
the quick overview of that article is that floating point tries to represent a range of values larger then would fit in 64bits, therefor there is going to be some imprecise representation, and this is what you are seeing.
With floating point number you get a representation of the number you try to encode. Mostly it is a number that is very close the the original number. More information on encoding/storing floating point numbers can be found here.
Note:
If you show the value of x, it still shows 0.011 because JavaScript has not yet decided what variable type x has. But after multiplying it with 10 the type got set to floating point (it is the only possibility) and the round error shows.
You can try to fix the nr of decimals with this one:
// fl is a float number with some nr of decimals
// d is how many decimals you want
function dec(fl, d) {
var p = Math.pow(10, d);
return Math.round(fl*p)/p;
}
Ex:
var n = 0.0012345;
console.log(dec(n,6)); // 0.001235
console.log(dec(n,5)); // 0.00123
console.log(dec(n,4)); // 0.0012
console.log(dec(n,3)); // 0.001
It works by first multiplying the float with 10^3 (1000) for three decimals, or 10^2 (100) for two decimals. Then do round on that and divide it back to original size.
Math.pow(10, d) makes 10^d (means that d will give us 1000).
In your case, do alert(dec(y,2));, it should work.

understanding floating point variables

There is some problem, i can't understand anyway.
look at this code please
<script type="text/javascript">
function math(x)
{
var y;
y = x*10;
alert(y);
}
</script>
<input type="button" onclick="math(0.011)">
What must be alerted after i click on button?
i think 0.11, but no, it alerts
0.10999999999999999
explain please this behavior.
thanks in advance
Ok. Let me try to explain it.
The basic thing to remember with floating point numbers is this: They occupy a limited amount of bits and try to represent the original number using base-2 arithmetic.
As you know, in base-2 arithmetic integers are represented by the powers of 2 that they contain. Thus, 6 would be represented as 4 + 2, ie. in binary as 110.
In order to understand how fractional numbers are represented, you have to think about how we represent fractional numbers in our decimal system. The fractional part of numbers (for example 0.11) is represented as multiples of inverse powers of 10 (since the base is 10). Thus 0.11 is actually 1/10 + 1/100. As you can appreciate, this is not powerful enough to represent all fractional numbers in a limited number of digits. For example, 1/3 would be 0.333333.... in a never ending fashion. If we had only 32 digits of space to write the number down, we would end up having only an approximation to the original number, 0.33333333333333333333333333333333. This number, for example, would give 0.99999999999999999999999999999999 if it was multiplied by 3 and not 1 as you would have expected.
The situation is similar in base-2. Each fractional number would be represented as multiples of inverse powers of 2. Thus 0.75 (in decimal) (ie 3/4) would be represented as 1/2 + 1/4, which would mean 0.11 (in base-2). Just as base 10 is not capable enough to represent every fractional number in a finite manner, base-2 cannot represent all fractional numbers given a limited amount of space.
Now, try to represent 0.11 in base-2; you start with 11/100 and try to find an inverse power of 2 that is just less than this number. 1/2 doesn't work, 1/4 neither, nor does 1/8. 1/16 fits the bill, so you mark a 1 in the 4th place after the decimal point and subtract 1/16 from 11/100. You are left with 19/400. Now try to find the next power of 2 that fits the description. 1/32 seems to be that one, mark the 5th place after the point and subtract 1/32 from 19/400, you get 13/800. Next one is 1/64 and you are left with 1/1600 thus the next one is all the way up at 1/2048, etc. etc. Thus we got as far as 0.00011100001 but it goes on and on; and you will see that there always is a fraction remaining. Now, I didn't go through the whole calculation, but after you have put in 32 binary digits after the dot you will still probably have some fraction left (and this is assuming that all of the 32 bits of space is spent representing the decimal part, which it is not). Thus, I am sure you can appreciate that the resulting number might differ from its actual value by some amount.
In your case, the difference is 0.00000000000000001 which is 1/100000000000000000 = 1/10^17 and I am sure that you can see why you might have that.
this is because you are dealing with floating point, and this is the expected behavior of floating point math.
what you need to do is format that number.
see this java explanation which also applies here if you want to know why this is happening.
in javascript all numbers are represented as 64bit floats, so you will run into this sort of thing often.
the quick overview of that article is that floating point tries to represent a range of values larger then would fit in 64bits, therefor there is going to be some imprecise representation, and this is what you are seeing.
With floating point number you get a representation of the number you try to encode. Mostly it is a number that is very close the the original number. More information on encoding/storing floating point numbers can be found here.
Note:
If you show the value of x, it still shows 0.011 because JavaScript has not yet decided what variable type x has. But after multiplying it with 10 the type got set to floating point (it is the only possibility) and the round error shows.
You can try to fix the nr of decimals with this one:
// fl is a float number with some nr of decimals
// d is how many decimals you want
function dec(fl, d) {
var p = Math.pow(10, d);
return Math.round(fl*p)/p;
}
Ex:
var n = 0.0012345;
console.log(dec(n,6)); // 0.001235
console.log(dec(n,5)); // 0.00123
console.log(dec(n,4)); // 0.0012
console.log(dec(n,3)); // 0.001
It works by first multiplying the float with 10^3 (1000) for three decimals, or 10^2 (100) for two decimals. Then do round on that and divide it back to original size.
Math.pow(10, d) makes 10^d (means that d will give us 1000).
In your case, do alert(dec(y,2));, it should work.

2.9999999999999999 >> .5?

I heard that you could right-shift a number by .5 instead of using Math.floor(). I decided to check its limits to make sure that it was a suitable replacement, so I checked the following values and got the following results in Google Chrome:
2.5 >> .5 == 2;
2.9999 >> .5 == 2;
2.999999999999999 >> .5 == 2; // 15 9s
2.9999999999999999 >> .5 == 3; // 16 9s
After some fiddling, I found out that the highest possible value of two which, when right-shifted by .5, would yield 2 is 2.9999999999999997779553950749686919152736663818359374999999¯ (with the 9 repeating) in Chrome and Firefox. The number is 2.9999999999999997779¯ in IE.
My question is: what is the significance of the number .0000000000000007779553950749686919152736663818359374? It's a very strange number and it really piqued my curiosity.
I've been trying to find an answer or at least some kind of pattern, but I think my problem lies in the fact that I really don't understand the bitwise operation. I understand the idea in principle, but shifting a bit sequence by .5 doesn't make any sense at all to me. Any help is appreciated.
For the record, the weird digit sequence changes with 2^x. The highest possible values of the following numbers that still truncate properly:
for 0: 0.9999999999999999444888487687421729788184165954589843749¯
for 1: 1.9999999999999999888977697537484345957636833190917968749¯
for 2-3: x+.99999999999999977795539507496869191527366638183593749¯
for 4-7: x+.9999999999999995559107901499373838305473327636718749¯
for 8-15: x+.999999999999999111821580299874767661094665527343749¯
...and so forth
Actually, you're simply ending up doing a floor() on the first operand, without any floating point operations going on. Since the left shift and right shift bitwise operations only make sense with integer operands, the JavaScript engine is converting the two operands to integers first:
2.999999 >> 0.5
Becomes:
Math.floor(2.999999) >> Math.floor(0.5)
Which in turn is:
2 >> 0
Shifting by 0 bits means "don't do a shift" and therefore you end up with the first operand, simply truncated to an integer.
The SpiderMonkey source code has:
switch (op) {
case JSOP_LSH:
case JSOP_RSH:
if (!js_DoubleToECMAInt32(cx, d, &i)) // Same as Math.floor()
return JS_FALSE;
if (!js_DoubleToECMAInt32(cx, d2, &j)) // Same as Math.floor()
return JS_FALSE;
j &= 31;
d = (op == JSOP_LSH) ? i << j : i >> j;
break;
Your seeing a "rounding up" with certain numbers is due to the fact the JavaScript engine can't handle decimal digits beyond a certain precision and therefore your number ends up getting rounded up to the next integer. Try this in your browser:
alert(2.999999999999999);
You'll get 2.999999999999999. Now try adding one more 9:
alert(2.9999999999999999);
You'll get a 3.
This is possibly the single worst idea I have ever seen. Its only possible purpose for existing is for winning an obfusticated code contest. There's no significance to the long numbers you posted -- they're an artifact of the underlying floating-point implementation, filtered through god-knows how many intermediate layers. Bit-shifting by a fractional number of bytes is insane and I'm surprised it doesn't raise an exception -- but that's Javascript, always willing to redefine "insane".
If I were you, I'd avoid ever using this "feature". Its only value is as a possible root cause for an unusual error condition. Use Math.floor() and take pity on the next programmer who will maintain the code.
Confirming a couple suspicions I had when reading the question:
Right-shifting any fractional number x by any fractional number y will simply truncate x, giving the same result as Math.floor() while thoroughly confusing the reader.
2.999999999999999777955395074968691915... is simply the largest number that can be differentiated from "3". Try evaluating it by itself -- if you add anything to it, it will evaluate to 3. This is an artifact of the browser and local system's floating-point implementation.
If you wanna go deeper, read "What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic": https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html
Try this javascript out:
alert(parseFloat("2.9999999999999997779553950749686919152736663818359374999999"));
Then try this:
alert(parseFloat("2.9999999999999997779553950749686919152736663818359375"));
What you are seeing is simple floating point inaccuracy. For more information about that, see this for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point#Accuracy_problems.
The basic issue is that the closest that a floating point value can get to representing the second number is greater than or equal to 3, whereas the closes that the a float can get to the first number is strictly less than three.
As for why right shifting by 0.5 does anything sane at all, it seems that 0.5 is just itself getting converted to an int (0) beforehand. Then the original float (2.999...) is getting converted to an int by truncation, as usual.
I don't think your right shift is relevant. You are simply beyond the resolution of a double precision floating point constant.
In Chrome:
var x = 2.999999999999999777955395074968691915273666381835937499999;
var y = 2.9999999999999997779553950749686919152736663818359375;
document.write("x=" + x);
document.write(" y=" + y);
Prints out: x = 2.9999999999999996 y=3
The shift right operator only operates on integers (both sides). So, shifting right by .5 bits should be exactly equivalent to shifting right by 0 bits. And, the left hand side is converted to an integer before the shift operation, which does the same thing as Math.floor().
I suspect that converting 2.9999999999999997779553950749686919152736663818359374999999
to it's binary representation would be enlightening. It's probably only 1 bit different
from true 3.
Good guess, but no cigar.
As the double precision FP number has 53 bits, the last FP number before 3 is actually
(exact): 2.999999999999999555910790149937383830547332763671875
But why it is
2.9999999999999997779553950749686919152736663818359375
(and this is exact, not 49999... !)
which is higher than the last displayable unit ? Rounding. The conversion routine (String to number) simply is correctly programmed to round the input the the next floating point number.
2.999999999999999555910790149937383830547332763671875
.......(values between, increasing) -> round down
2.9999999999999997779553950749686919152736663818359375
....... (values between, increasing) -> round up to 3
3
The conversion input must use full precision. If the number is exactly the half between
those two fp numbers (which is 2.9999999999999997779553950749686919152736663818359375)
the rounding depends on the setted flags. The default rounding is round to even, meaning that the number will be rounded to the next even number.
Now
3 = 11. (binary)
2.999... = 10.11111111111...... (binary)
All bits are set, the number is always odd. That means that the exact half number will be rounded up, so you are getting the strange .....49999 period because it must be smaller than the exact half to be distinguishable from 3.
I suspect that converting 2.9999999999999997779553950749686919152736663818359374999999 to its binary representation would be enlightening. It's probably only 1 bit different from true 3.
And to add to John's answer, the odds of this being more performant than Math.floor are vanishingly small.
I don't know if JavaScript uses floating-point numbers or some kind of infinite-precision library, but either way, you're going to get rounding errors on an operation like this -- even if it's pretty well defined.
It should be noted that the number ".0000000000000007779553950749686919152736663818359374" is quite possibly the Epsilon, defined as "the smallest number E such that (1+E) > 1."

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