Formatting doubles for output in C# - c#

Running a quick experiment related to Is double Multiplication Broken in .NET? and reading a couple of articles on C# string formatting, I thought that this:
{
double i = 10 * 0.69;
Console.WriteLine(i);
Console.WriteLine(String.Format(" {0:F20}", i));
Console.WriteLine(String.Format("+ {0:F20}", 6.9 - i));
Console.WriteLine(String.Format("= {0:F20}", 6.9));
}
Would be the C# equivalent of this C code:
{
double i = 10 * 0.69;
printf ( "%f\n", i );
printf ( " %.20f\n", i );
printf ( "+ %.20f\n", 6.9 - i );
printf ( "= %.20f\n", 6.9 );
}
However the C# produces the output:
6.9
6.90000000000000000000
+ 0.00000000000000088818
= 6.90000000000000000000
despite i showing up equal to the value 6.89999999999999946709 (rather than 6.9) in the debugger.
compared with C which shows the precision requested by the format:
6.900000
6.89999999999999946709
+ 0.00000000000000088818
= 6.90000000000000035527
What's going on?
( Microsoft .NET Framework Version 3.51 SP1 / Visual Studio C# 2008 Express Edition )
I have a background in numerical computing and experience implementing interval arithmetic - a technique for estimating errors due to the limits of precision in complicated numerical systems - on various platforms. To get the bounty, don't try and explain about the storage precision - in this case it's a difference of one ULP of a 64 bit double.
To get the bounty, I want to know how (or whether) .Net can format a double to the requested precision as visible in the C code.

The problem is that .NET will always round a double to 15 significant decimal digits before applying your formatting, regardless of the precision requested by your format and regardless of the exact decimal value of the binary number.
I'd guess that the Visual Studio debugger has its own format/display routines that directly access the internal binary number, hence the discrepancies between your C# code, your C code and the debugger.
There's nothing built-in that will allow you to access the exact decimal value of a double, or to enable you to format a double to a specific number of decimal places, but you could do this yourself by picking apart the internal binary number and rebuilding it as a string representation of the decimal value.
Alternatively, you could use Jon Skeet's DoubleConverter class (linked to from his "Binary floating point and .NET" article). This has a ToExactString method which returns the exact decimal value of a double. You could easily modify this to enable rounding of the output to a specific precision.
double i = 10 * 0.69;
Console.WriteLine(DoubleConverter.ToExactString(i));
Console.WriteLine(DoubleConverter.ToExactString(6.9 - i));
Console.WriteLine(DoubleConverter.ToExactString(6.9));
// 6.89999999999999946709294817992486059665679931640625
// 0.00000000000000088817841970012523233890533447265625
// 6.9000000000000003552713678800500929355621337890625

Digits after decimal point
// just two decimal places
String.Format("{0:0.00}", 123.4567); // "123.46"
String.Format("{0:0.00}", 123.4); // "123.40"
String.Format("{0:0.00}", 123.0); // "123.00"
// max. two decimal places
String.Format("{0:0.##}", 123.4567); // "123.46"
String.Format("{0:0.##}", 123.4); // "123.4"
String.Format("{0:0.##}", 123.0); // "123"
// at least two digits before decimal point
String.Format("{0:00.0}", 123.4567); // "123.5"
String.Format("{0:00.0}", 23.4567); // "23.5"
String.Format("{0:00.0}", 3.4567); // "03.5"
String.Format("{0:00.0}", -3.4567); // "-03.5"
Thousands separator
String.Format("{0:0,0.0}", 12345.67); // "12,345.7"
String.Format("{0:0,0}", 12345.67); // "12,346"
Zero
Following code shows how can be formatted a zero (of double type).
String.Format("{0:0.0}", 0.0); // "0.0"
String.Format("{0:0.#}", 0.0); // "0"
String.Format("{0:#.0}", 0.0); // ".0"
String.Format("{0:#.#}", 0.0); // ""
Align numbers with spaces
String.Format("{0,10:0.0}", 123.4567); // " 123.5"
String.Format("{0,-10:0.0}", 123.4567); // "123.5 "
String.Format("{0,10:0.0}", -123.4567); // " -123.5"
String.Format("{0,-10:0.0}", -123.4567); // "-123.5 "
Custom formatting for negative numbers and zero
String.Format("{0:0.00;minus 0.00;zero}", 123.4567); // "123.46"
String.Format("{0:0.00;minus 0.00;zero}", -123.4567); // "minus 123.46"
String.Format("{0:0.00;minus 0.00;zero}", 0.0); // "zero"
Some funny examples
String.Format("{0:my number is 0.0}", 12.3); // "my number is 12.3"
String.Format("{0:0aaa.bbb0}", 12.3);

Take a look at this MSDN reference. In the notes it states that the numbers are rounded to the number of decimal places requested.
If instead you use "{0:R}" it will produce what's referred to as a "round-trip" value, take a look at this MSDN reference for more info, here's my code and the output:
double d = 10 * 0.69;
Console.WriteLine(" {0:R}", d);
Console.WriteLine("+ {0:F20}", 6.9 - d);
Console.WriteLine("= {0:F20}", 6.9);
output
6.8999999999999995
+ 0.00000000000000088818
= 6.90000000000000000000

Though this question is meanwhile closed, I believe it is worth mentioning how this atrocity came into existence. In a way, you may blame the C# spec, which states that a double must have a precision of 15 or 16 digits (the result of IEEE-754). A bit further on (section 4.1.6) it's stated that implementations are allowed to use higher precision. Mind you: higher, not lower. They are even allowed to deviate from IEEE-754: expressions of the type x * y / z where x * y would yield +/-INF but would be in a valid range after dividing, do not have to result in an error. This feature makes it easier for compilers to use higher precision in architectures where that'd yield better performance.
But I promised a "reason". Here's a quote (you requested a resource in one of your recent comments) from the Shared Source CLI, in clr/src/vm/comnumber.cpp:
"In order to give numbers that are both
friendly to display and
round-trippable, we parse the number
using 15 digits and then determine if
it round trips to the same value. If
it does, we convert that NUMBER to a
string, otherwise we reparse using 17
digits and display that."
In other words: MS's CLI Development Team decided to be both round-trippable and show pretty values that aren't such a pain to read. Good or bad? I'd wish for an opt-in or opt-out.
The trick it does to find out this round-trippability of any given number? Conversion to a generic NUMBER structure (which has separate fields for the properties of a double) and back, and then compare whether the result is different. If it is different, the exact value is used (as in your middle value with 6.9 - i) if it is the same, the "pretty value" is used.
As you already remarked in a comment to Andyp, 6.90...00 is bitwise equal to 6.89...9467. And now you know why 0.0...8818 is used: it is bitwise different from 0.0.
This 15 digits barrier is hard-coded and can only be changed by recompiling the CLI, by using Mono or by calling Microsoft and convincing them to add an option to print full "precision" (it is not really precision, but by the lack of a better word). It's probably easier to just calculate the 52 bits precision yourself or use the library mentioned earlier.
EDIT: if you like to experiment yourself with IEE-754 floating points, consider this online tool, which shows you all relevant parts of a floating point.

Use
Console.WriteLine(String.Format(" {0:G17}", i));
That will give you all the 17 digits it have. By default, a Double value contains 15 decimal digits of precision, although a maximum of 17 digits is maintained internally. {0:R} will not always give you 17 digits, it will give 15 if the number can be represented with that precision.
which returns 15 digits if the number can be represented with that precision or 17 digits if the number can only be represented with maximum precision. There isn't any thing you can to do to make the the double return more digits that is the way it's implemented. If you don't like it do a new double class yourself...
.NET's double cant store any more digits than 17 so you cant see 6.89999999999999946709 in the debugger you would see 6.8999999999999995. Please provide an image to prove us wrong.

The answer to this is simple and can be found on MSDN
Remember that a floating-point number can only approximate a decimal number, and that the precision of a floating-point number determines how accurately that number approximates a decimal number. By default, a Double value contains 15 decimal digits of precision, although a maximum of 17 digits is maintained internally.
In your example, the value of i is 6.89999999999999946709 which has the number 9 for all positions between the 3rd and the 16th digit (remember to count the integer part in the digits). When converting to string, the framework rounds the number to the 15th digit.
i = 6.89999999999999 946709
digit = 111111 111122
1 23456789012345 678901

i tried to reproduce your findings, but when I watched 'i' in the debugger it showed up as '6.8999999999999995' not as '6.89999999999999946709' as you wrote in the question. Can you provide steps to reproduce what you saw?
To see what the debugger shows you, you can use a DoubleConverter as in the following line of code:
Console.WriteLine(TypeDescriptor.GetConverter(i).ConvertTo(i, typeof(string)));
Hope this helps!
Edit: I guess I'm more tired than I thought, of course this is the same as formatting to the roundtrip value (as mentioned before).

Another method, starting with the method:
double i = (10 * 0.69);
Console.Write(ToStringFull(i)); // Output 6.89999999999999946709294817
Console.Write(ToStringFull(-6.9) // Output -6.90000000000000035527136788
Console.Write(ToStringFull(i - 6.9)); // Output -0.00000000000000088817841970012523233890533
A Drop-In Function...
public static string ToStringFull(double value)
{
if (value == 0.0) return "0.0";
if (double.IsNaN(value)) return "NaN";
if (double.IsNegativeInfinity(value)) return "-Inf";
if (double.IsPositiveInfinity(value)) return "+Inf";
long bits = BitConverter.DoubleToInt64Bits(value);
BigInteger mantissa = (bits & 0xfffffffffffffL) | 0x10000000000000L;
int exp = (int)((bits >> 52) & 0x7ffL) - 1023;
string sign = (value < 0) ? "-" : "";
if (54 > exp)
{
double offset = (exp / 3.321928094887362358); //...or =Math.Log10(Math.Abs(value))
BigInteger temp = mantissa * BigInteger.Pow(10, 26 - (int)offset) >> (52 - exp);
string numberText = temp.ToString();
int digitsNeeded = (int)((numberText[0] - '5') / 10.0 - offset);
if (exp < 0)
return sign + "0." + new string('0', digitsNeeded) + numberText;
else
return sign + numberText.Insert(1 - digitsNeeded, ".");
}
return sign + (mantissa >> (52 - exp)).ToString();
}
How it works
To solve this problem I used the BigInteger tools. Large values are simple as they just require left shifting the mantissa by the exponent. For small values we cannot just directly right shift as that would lose the precision bits. We must first give it some extra size by multiplying it by a 10^n and then do the right shifts. After that, we move over the decimal n places to the left. More text/code here.

The answer is yes, double printing is broken in .NET, they are printing trailing garbage digits.
You can read how to implement it correctly here.
I have had to do the same for IronScheme.
> (* 10.0 0.69)
6.8999999999999995
> 6.89999999999999946709
6.8999999999999995
> (- 6.9 (* 10.0 0.69))
8.881784197001252e-16
> 6.9
6.9
> (- 6.9 8.881784197001252e-16)
6.8999999999999995
Note: Both C and C# has correct value, just broken printing.
Update: I am still looking for the mailing list conversation I had that lead up to this discovery.

I found this quick fix.
double i = 10 * 0.69;
System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(i);
String s = String.Format("{0:F20}", i).Substring(0,20);
System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(s + " " +s.Length );

Related

How to print all the decimal points without rounding up?

I want to calculate wind_chill by getting temp and wind_speed from user.
All variables are declared as double.
wind_chill = 35.74 + 0.6215 * temp + (0.4275 * temp - 35.75) * System.Math.Pow(wind_speed, 0.16);
I am getting this O/P:-
Enter temperature and wind Speed: 20 7 wind_chill is:11.03490062551
But I want to print all the decimal number till last without round up.
Expected O/P:-
wind_chill = 11.034900625509998
By declaring variables as decimal and converting all the values in decimal:
I am getting this output:
wind_chill = 11.034900625510096
Still not matching with the expected one. I searched But I didn't get my answer.How to get expected output?
Calculate the value with doubles. It is just that .NET will format the value to 15 characters when printing. Use R format to get all digits.
var wind_chill = WindChillDbl(20.0, 7.0);
Console.WriteLine(String.Format("{0:R}", wind_chill));
public static double WindChillDbl(double temp, double wind_speed)
{
return 35.74 + 0.6215 * temp + (0.4275 * temp - 35.75) * System.Math.Pow(wind_speed, 0.16);
}
"By default, the return value only contains 15 digits of precision although a maximum of 17 digits is maintained internally. If the value of this instance has greater than 15 digits, ToString returns PositiveInfinitySymbol or NegativeInfinitySymbol instead of the expected number. If you require more precision, specify format with the "G17" format specification, which always returns 17 digits of precision, or "R", which returns 15 digits if the number can be represented with that precision or 17 digits if the number can only be represented with maximum precision." MSDN
You can inspect your calculation to see that the values returned for most of the expression are accurate. The problem is with the accuracy of System.Math.Pow(wind_speed, 0.16);. If you look at wolframalpha for that input, there are signifcantly more digits provided than the 1.36526100641507 returned by Math.Pow.
The reason for this is because Math.pow uses float point types which are inaccurate by design. You may also be able to use BigInteger and figure out a way to make your equation work with that.
You can resolve this in a couple of ways:
Use BigRational
Rework the equation to somehow use BigInteger
See this question: What is the equivalent of the Java BigDecimal class in C#?, specifically this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/13813535/2127492
If you do go with the BigDecimal class provided in that answer, you will be able to make use of the method BigDecimal Pow(double basis, double exponent) to improve the accuracy your calculation.
You can see your calculation with the above class here.

Double comparison precision loss in C#, accuracy loss happening when adding subtracting doubles

Just started learning C#. I plan to use it for heavy math simulations, including numerical solving. The problem is I get precision loss when adding and subtracting double's, as well as when comparing. Code and what it returns (in comments) is below:
namespace ex3
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
double x = 1e-20, foo = 4.0;
Console.WriteLine((x + foo)); // prints 4
Console.WriteLine((x - foo)); // prints -4
Console.WriteLine((x + foo)==foo); // prints True BUT THIS IS FALSE!!!
}
}
}
Would appreciate any help and clarifications!
What puzzles me is that (x + foo)==foo returns True.
Take a look at the MSDN reference for double: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-AU/library/678hzkk9.aspx
It states that a double has a precision of 15 to 16 digits.
But the difference, in terms of digits, between 1e-20 and 4.0 is 20 digits. The mere act of trying to add or subtract 1e-20 to or from 4.0 simply means that the 1e-20 is lost because it cannot fit within the 15 to 16 digits of precision.
So, as far as double is concerned, 4.0 + 1e-20 == 4.0 and 4.0 - 1e-20 == 4.0.
Additional to Enigmativity's answer:
To make this works you need more precision, and that decimal with a precision of 28 to 29 digits and base of 10:
decimal x = 1e-20m, foo = 4.0m;
Console.WriteLine((x + foo)); // prints 4.00000000000000000001
Console.WriteLine((x - foo)); // prints -3.99999999999999999999
Console.WriteLine((x + foo) == foo); // prints false.
But beware that it's true that decimal has bigger precision but has a lower range. see more about decimal here
What you are looking for is probably the Decimal Structure (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.decimal.aspx).
Doubles can't right represent that kind of values with the precision you are looking for (C# double to decimal precision loss). Instead, try using the Decimal class, like so:
decimal x = 1e-20M, foo = 4.0M;
Console.WriteLine(Decimal.Add(x, foo)); //prints 4,0000000000000000001
Console.WriteLine(Decimal.Add(x, -foo)); //prints -3,9999999999999999999
Console.WriteLine(Decimal.Add(x, foo) == foo); // prints false
This is not a problem with C#, but with your computer. It's not really complicated or hard to understand, but it's a long read. You should read this article, if you want an actual in depth knowledge of how your computer works.
An excellent TLDR site that imho is a better intro to the subject than the aforementioned article is this one:
http://floating-point-gui.de/
I'll provide you with a very short explanation of what's going on, but you should certainly read at least that site, to avoid trouble in the future, since your field of application will require such knowledge in depth.
What happens is the following: you have 1e-20, which is a smaller number than 1.11e-16. That other number, is called the machine epsilon for double precision on your computer (most likely). If you add a number equal to or larger than 1, to something smaller than the machine epsilon, it will be rounded off, back to the large number. That's due to the IEEE 754 representation. This means that after the addition happens, the result, which is "correct" (as if you had infinite precision), the result is stored in a format of limited/finite precision, that rounds 4.00....001 to 4, because the error of the rounding is smaller than 1.11e-16, thus is considered acceptable.

how to get the BigInteger to the pow Double in C#?

I tried to use BigInteger.Pow method to calculate something like 10^12345.987654321 but this method only accept integer number as exponent like this:
BigInteger.Pow(BigInteger x, int y)
so how can I use double number as exponent in above method?
There's no arbitrary precision large number support in C#, so this cannot be done directly. There are some alternatives (such as looking for a 3rd party library), or you can try something like the code below - if the base is small enough, like in your case.
public class StackOverflow_11179289
{
public static void Test()
{
int #base = 10;
double exp = 12345.123;
int intExp = (int)Math.Floor(exp);
double fracExp = exp - intExp;
BigInteger temp = BigInteger.Pow(#base, intExp);
double temp2 = Math.Pow(#base, fracExp);
int fractionBitsForDouble = 52;
for (int i = 0; i < fractionBitsForDouble; i++)
{
temp = BigInteger.Divide(temp, 2);
temp2 *= 2;
}
BigInteger result = BigInteger.Multiply(temp, (BigInteger)temp2);
Console.WriteLine(result);
}
}
The idea is to use big integer math to compute the power of the integer part of the exponent, then use double (64-bit floating point) math to compute the power of the fraction part. Then, using the fact that
a ^ (int + frac) = a ^ int * a ^ frac
we can combine the two values into a single big integer. But simply converting the double value to a BigInteger would lose a lot of its precision, so we first "shift" the precision onto the bigInteger (using the loop above, and the fact that the double type uses 52 bits for the precision), then multiplying the result.
Notice that the result is an approximation, if you want a more precise number, you'll need a library that does arbitrary precision floating point math.
Update: If the base / exponent are small enough that the power would be in the range of double, we can simply do what Sebastian Piu suggested (new BigInteger(Math.Pow((double)#base, exp)))
I like carlosfigueira's answer, but of course the result of his method can only be correct on the first (most significant) 15-17 digits, because a System.Double is used as a multiplier eventually.
It is interesting to note that there does exist a method BigInteger.Log that performs the "inverse" operation. So if you want to calculate Pow(7, 123456.78) you could, in theory, search all BigInteger numbers x to find one number such that BigInteger.Log(x, 7) is equal to 123456.78 or closer to 123456.78 than any other x of type BigInteger.
Of course the logarithm function is increasing, so your search can use some kind of "binary search" (bisection search). Our answer lies between Pow(7, 123456) and Pow(7, 123457) which can both be calculated exactly.
Skip the rest if you want
Now, how can we predict in advance if there are more than one integer whose logarithm is 123456.78, up to the precision of System.Double, or if there is in fact no integer whose logarithm hits that specific Double (the precise result of an ideal Pow function being an irrational number)? In our example, there will be very many integers giving the same Double 123456.78 because the factor m = Pow(7, epsilon) (where epsilon is the smallest positive number such that 123456.78 + epilon has a representation as a Double different from the representation of 123456.78 itself) is big enough that there will be very many integers between the true answer and the true answer multiplied by m.
Remember from calculus that the derivative of the mathemtical function x → Pow(7, x) is x → Log(7)*Pow(7, x), so the slope of the graph of the exponential function in question will be Log(7)*Pow(7, 123456.78). This number multiplied by the above epsilon is still much much greater than one, so there are many integers satisfying our need.
Actually, I think carlosfigueira's method will give a "correct" answer x in the sense that Log(x, 7) has the same representation as a Double as 123456.78 has. But has anyone tried it? :-)
I'll provide another answer that is hopefully more clear. The point is: Since the precision of System.Double is limited to approx. 15-17 decimal digits, the result of any Pow(BigInteger, Double) calculation will have an even more limited precision. Therefore, there's no hope of doing better than carlosfigueira's answer does.
Let me illustrate this with an example. Suppose we wanted to calculate
Pow(10, exponent)
where in this example I choose for exponent the double-precision number
const double exponent = 100.0 * Math.PI;
This is of course only an example. The value of exponent, in decimal, can be given as one of
314.159265358979
314.15926535897933
314.1592653589793258106510620564222335815429687500000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000...
The first of these numbers is what you normally see (15 digits). The second version is produced with exponent.ToString("R") and contains 17 digits. Note that the precision of Double is less than 17 digits. The third representation above is the theoretical "exact" value of exponent. Note that this differs, of course, from the mathematical number 100π near the 17th digit.
To figure out what Pow(10, exponent) ought to be, I simply did BigInteger.Log10(x) on a lot of numbers x to see how I could reproduce exponent. So the results presented here simply reflect the .NET Framework's implementation of BigInteger.Log10.
It turns out that any BigInteger x from
0x0C3F859904635FC0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
through
0x0C3F85990481FE7FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
makes Log10(x) equal to exponent to the precision of 15 digits. Similarly, any number from
0x0C3F8599047BDEC0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
through
0x0C3F8599047D667FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
satisfies Log10(x) == exponent to the precision of Double. Put in another way, any number from the latter range is equally "correct" as the result of Pow(10, exponent), simply because the precision of exponent is so limited.
(Interlude: The bunches of 0s and Fs reveal that .NET's implementation only considers the most significant bytes of x. They don't care to do better, precisely because the Double type has this limited precision.)
Now, the only reason to introduce third-party software, would be if you insist that exponent is to be interpreted as the third of the decimal numbers given above. (It's really a miracle that the Double type allowed you to specify exactly the number you wanted, huh?) In that case, the result of Pow(10, exponent) would be an irrational (but algebraic) number with a tail of never-repeating decimals. It couldn't fit in an integer without rounding/truncating. PS! If we take the exponent to be the real number 100π, the result, mathematically, would be different: some transcendental number, I suspect.

How can you get the number of digits contained in a double?

I'm trying to get the number of digits in the following double value: 56.46855976 without using converting it to a string (and simply replacing the "." with a "").
Anybody got any ideas?
Count how often you must divide the number by 10 until it's smaller than 1 -> that gives you the digits before the decimal point.
Then count how often you must multiply the original number by 10 until it equals the Math.Floor-result -> that gives you the digits behind the decimal points.
Add. Be glad.
Edit: As Joey points out, there is some uncertianity in it. Define a maximum number of digits beforehand so you don't create an infinite loop.
On the other hand - "How long is the coast of Denmark?"...
/// Returns how many digits there are to the left of the .
public static int CountDigits(double num) {
int digits = 0;
while (num >= 1) {
digits++;
num /= 10;
}
return digits;
}
As Martin mentioned, counting to the right of the . is pointless.
Tests:
MathPlus.CountDigits(56.46855976) -> 2
MathPlus.CountDigits((double)long.MaxValue + 1) -> 19
MathPlus.CountDigits(double.MaxValue) -> 309
Converting to a string might be the best option you have. Remember that doubles are represented in Base 2 internally. Therefore the decimal representation you see is only an approximation of the actually stored value (except for integers up to 253) which is a sum of individual powers of 2.
So trying to figure out the number of decimal digits from the binary representation is certainly not an easy or trivial task – especially since the framework might also apply rounding to make numbers like 3.999999999998 appear like 4.0 since they appear to have more precision than there actually is.

Is dotNet decimal type vulnerable for the binary comparison error?

One error I stumble upon every few month is this one:
double x = 19.08;
double y = 2.01;
double result = 21.09;
if (x + y == result)
{
MessageBox.Show("x equals y");
}
else
{
MessageBox.Show("that shouldn't happen!"); // <-- this code fires
}
You would suppose the code to display "x equals y" but that's not the case.
The short explanation is that the decimal places are, represented as a binary digit, do not fit into double.
Example:
2.625 would look like:
10.101
because
1-------0-------1---------0----------1
1 * 2 + 0 * 1 + 1 * 0.5 + 0 * 0.25 + 1 * 0,125 = 2.65
And some values (like the result of 19.08 plus 2.01) cannot be be represented with the bits of a double.
One solution is to use a constant:
double x = 19.08;
double y = 2.01;
double result = 21.09;
double EPSILON = 10E-10;
if ( x + y - result < EPSILON )
{
MessageBox.Show("x equals y"); // <-- this code fires
}
else
{
MessageBox.Show("that shouldn't happen!");
}
If I use decimal instead of double in the first example, the result is "x equals y".
But I'm asking myself If this is because of "decimal" type is not vulnerable of this behaviour or it just works in this case because the values "fit" into 128 bit.
Maybe someone has a better solution than using a constant?
Btw. this is not a dotNet/C# problem, it happens in most programming languages I think.
Decimal will be accurate so long as you stay within values which are naturally decimals in an appropriate range. So if you just add and subtract, for example, without doing anything which would skew the range of digits required too much (adding a very very big number to a very very small number) you will end up with easily comparable results. Multiplication is likely to be okay too, but I suspect it's easier to get inaccuracies with it.
As soon as you start dividing, that's where the problems can come - particularly if you start dividing by numbers which include prime factors other than 2 or 5.
Bottom line: it's safe in certain situations, but you really need to have a good handle on exactly what operations you'll be performing.
Note that it's not the 128-bitness of decimal which is helping you here - it's the representation of numbers as floating decimal point values rather than floating binary point values. See my articles on .NET binary floating point and decimal floating point for more information.
System.Decimal is just a floating point number with a different base so, in theory, it is still vulnerable to the sort of error you point out. I think you just happened on a case where rounding doesn't happen. More information here.
Yes, the .NET System.Double structure is subject to the problem you describe.
from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.double.epsilon.aspx:
Two apparently equivalent floating-point numbers might not compare equal because of differences in their least significant digits. For example, the C# expression, (double)1/3 == (double)0.33333, does not compare equal because the division operation on the left side has maximum precision while the constant on the right side is precise only to the specified digits. If you create a custom algorithm that determines whether two floating-point numbers can be considered equal, you must use a value that is greater than the Epsilon constant to establish the acceptable absolute margin of difference for the two values to be considered equal. (Typically, that margin of difference is many times greater than Epsilon.)

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