Test::More::is compares using eq, so it's doing stringification on the floating point values. Different builds of perl can stringify differently in the far-out place values. So even if your module is returning exactly the same value, the string comparison might be different on two different systems.

IF you want numerical equivalence testing, you should use cmp_ok instead -- but that's a big "IF".

It's not Test::More that is returning 0.99999999999999996; it is $embed_pass->compare(...) -- that is, your method is what's returning that value. And if I skimmed the source correctly, you are calling a method from Data::CosineSimilarity , which you do not control. For floating-point math, if you don't control the chain 100%, then you cannot control whether rounding differences will occur in unexpected places. For values that are floating point -- especially when those values go through many steps or go through one or more steps that you do not control -- then I highly recommend you decide what is an acceptable precision for your module's needs, and code your test in such a way that it accepts anything within that range.

If you want to support 32bit floats, then I would say your test should make sure that you are within 1e-6 * $expected -- ie, cmp_ok abs($got/$exp-1), '<=', 1e-6 ... or maybe 0.5e-6 if you're brave (it's been a while since I've done the calcs, for whether that works with 32bit float which has 23bit mantissa -- but my back-of-the-envelope says the ULP is about 0.12e-6 relative to the power of two, and since your mantissa can be nearly twice the power of two, 0.25e-6 is the best, so 0.5e-6 would be as small as I'd want to go.) (Caveat: if $exp is 0, that of course won't work, and you could probably use abs($got-$exp) instead. But in this example, $exp was 1, so you're safe.)

I would think that would be enough precision to make sure your module is doing its part of the job correctly.

Alternately, doing a sprintf '%.6f' on both the $got and $exp would allow you to do a string comparison using 'is', regardless of the floating size and stringification differences.

To sum up: When testing a module that does floating point math, unless you know for sure you can guarantee exact values, you need to test against an expected accuracy rather than looking for exact values (whether that's done through sprintf-rounding or through numeric comparison of fractional-delta-vs-accuracy instead of got-vs-expected).

In reply to Re: Outlier test fail by pryrt
in thread Outlier test fail by Bod

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.