Floating point conversion

[Jeff Wisard]

Hello all,
I am trying to convert Strings to floats and am getting incorrect results during the conversion. For example:
System.out.println(Float.parseFloat("42.44"));
will display
42.439998626708984
Can anyone tell me why this is and how I can get around it?
Thanks!

[Martin Clifford]

Originally posted by Jeff Wisard:
System.out.println(Float.parseFloat("42.44"));

It seems to work fine for me. I can't tell you why it doesn't work for you. If it persists, take a look at NumberFormat, and see if anything there helps.
Good luck!

[Jeff Wisard]

I don't know if this will make a difference: I am using JDK1.3.1_06.

[Norm Miller]

Jeff,
Floats are, in general, approximations of number values. In some cases, like .5, the float will be exact. However many numbers can't be represented exactly after they are converted to binary representation. All your result means is that your input could only be approximated as a float.
However, when you display it, you have control over how it looks. The decimalformat class will let you trim it to just two decimal places and you will be happy with the result.

[Cindy Glass]

Or round it to the level of precision that you are interested in.