Python can't divide??!?!

[Stephen Boulet]

Works fine here:

 >>> a = 3/5
 >>> b = 3/5.0
 >>> c = 3.0/3
 >>> d = 3.0/5.0
 >>>
 >>> print "%f %f %f %f" % (a,b,c,d)
0.000000 0.600000 1.000000 0.600000

but

 >>> print "%.17f %.17f %.17f %.17f" % (a,b,c,d)
0.00000000000000000 0.59999999999999998 1.00000000000000000 
0.59999999999999998

;)

Stephen


Dan Williams wrote:

> Ummmm...
> 
> This is weird. Sorry if it's known about (how can it NOT be, I wonder?) but
> I haven't seen any reference to it anywhere.
> 
> I'm running the latest Python (2.3.3) on Windows XP Pro, i386 architecture.
> 
> Fire up python or whatever.
> 
> Do this:     Result:
> 
> 3 / 5        0                       Fair enough, int / int = int
> 3 / 5.0      0.59999999999999998     eh?
> 3.0 / 3      0.59999999999999998     ummmm...
> 3.0 / 5.0    0.59999999999999998     how did I guess...
> 
> That's just an example. Python cannot divide. Period. If you try 1.0 / 3 you
> get 0.33333333333333331, and from this, the above example, and a few tests,
> I speculate that *something* is subtracting 2 from the last digit *after*
> the division is done.
> 
> Wacky.
> 
> Now, is this just me, or can someone else duplicate it? I've tried it on two
> computers here, but they're both Win XP. I'm about to test it on Linux but I
> figured I'd write this first.
> 
> Dan
> 
> 
>