in reply to Re: sprintf rounding convention
in thread sprintf rounding convention

That's incorrect. %f and other floating point specifiers always round to even. From F0convert: 
nv += 0.5;
uv = (UV)nv;
if (uv & 1 && uv == nv)
    uv--;                       /* Round to even */

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(There are paths I didn't take the time to understand, so maybe it doesn't always get to this function.)

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Re^3: sprintf rounding convention
by Joost (Canon) on Oct 30, 2009 at 23:01 UTC
    Hmm... Then I think the sprintf documentation is incorrect, or possibly just confusing: (emphasis mine)
    Perl does its own "sprintf" formatting--it emulates the C function "sprintf", but it doesn't use it (except for floating- point numbers, and even then only the standard modifiers are allowed). As a result, any non-standard extensions in your local "sprintf" are not available from Perl.
    "What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"
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      And what's incorrect about that? Perl prefers the "nearest even round" operation, as I recall, but otherwise should work the same as your local sprintf.

      -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

      The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

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Re^3: sprintf rounding convention
by kennethk (Abbot) on Oct 30, 2009 at 22:24 UTC
    Now I'm confused: 

    $ perl -v

This is perl, v5.8.8 built for x86_64-linux-gnu-thread-multi

$ perl -e 'printf "%.2f\n%.2f\n", 0.335, 1.335;'
0.34
1.33

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    and

    
C:\>perl -v

This is perl, v5.8.9 built for MSWin32-x86-multi-thread
(with 9 registered patches, see perl -V for more detail)

C:\>perl -e "printf qq{%.2f\n%.2f\n}, 0.335, 1.335;"
0.34
1.34

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    Am I missing something (as usual)?

    Update:

    Following ikegami's suggestion, I tried increasing the precision to 40 digits, and got: 

    $ perl -v

This is perl, v5.8.8 built for x86_64-linux-gnu-thread-multi

$ perl -e 'printf "%.40f\n%.40f\n", 0.335, 1.335;'
0.3350000000000000199840144432528177276254
1.3349999999999999644728632119949907064438

C:\>perl -v

This is perl, v5.8.9 built for MSWin32-x86-multi-thread
(with 9 registered patches, see perl -V for more detail)

C:\>perl -e "printf qq{%.40f\n%.40f\n}, 0.335, 1.335;"
0.3350000000000000200000000000000000000000
1.3350000000000000000000000000000000000000

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    It looks like this variation is just an artifact of 64-bit vs. 32-bit, emphasizing how you should never rely on precise results from rounding.

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      I bet perl -e'printf "%.40e\n", 0.335' gives 0.334999... on the system that rounded to 1.33. Let me know if not.

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