比较两个双精度浮点数或两个浮点数最有效的方法是什么?

简单地这样做是不正确的:

bool CompareDoubles1 (double A, double B)
{
   return A == B;
}

比如:

bool CompareDoubles2 (double A, double B) 
{
   diff = A - B;
   return (diff < EPSILON) && (-diff < EPSILON);
}

似乎是浪费加工。

有人知道更聪明的浮点比较器吗?


当前回答

意识到这是一个老话题,但这篇文章是我发现的关于比较浮点数的最直接的文章之一,如果你想探索更多,它也有更详细的参考资料,它的主要站点涵盖了处理浮点数的完整范围的问题《浮点指南:比较》。

我们可以在浮点公差中找到一篇更实用的文章,并指出有绝对公差测试,在c++中归结为:

bool absoluteToleranceCompare(double x, double y)
{
    return std::fabs(x - y) <= std::numeric_limits<double>::epsilon() ;
}

及相对耐量试验:

bool relativeToleranceCompare(double x, double y)
{
    double maxXY = std::max( std::fabs(x) , std::fabs(y) ) ;
    return std::fabs(x - y) <= std::numeric_limits<double>::epsilon()*maxXY ;
}

文章指出,当x和y较大时,绝对检验失败;当x和y较小时,相对检验失败。假设绝对耐受性和相对耐受性是相同的,综合测试将是这样的:

bool combinedToleranceCompare(double x, double y)
{
    double maxXYOne = std::max( { 1.0, std::fabs(x) , std::fabs(y) } ) ;

    return std::fabs(x - y) <= std::numeric_limits<double>::epsilon()*maxXYOne ;
}

其他回答

我最终花了相当多的时间在这个伟大的线程通过材料。我怀疑每个人都想花这么多时间,所以我将强调我所学到的总结和我实施的解决方案。

快速的总结

Is 1e-8 approximately same as 1e-16? If you are looking at noisy sensor data then probably yes but if you are doing molecular simulation then may be not! Bottom line: You always need to think of tolerance value in context of specific function call and not just make it generic app-wide hard-coded constant. For general library functions, it's still nice to have parameter with default tolerance. A typical choice is numeric_limits::epsilon() which is same as FLT_EPSILON in float.h. This is however problematic because epsilon for comparing values like 1.0 is not same as epsilon for values like 1E9. The FLT_EPSILON is defined for 1.0. The obvious implementation to check if number is within tolerance is fabs(a-b) <= epsilon however this doesn't work because default epsilon is defined for 1.0. We need to scale epsilon up or down in terms of a and b. There are two solution to this problem: either you set epsilon proportional to max(a,b) or you can get next representable numbers around a and then see if b falls into that range. The former is called "relative" method and later is called ULP method. Both methods actually fails anyway when comparing with 0. In this case, application must supply correct tolerance.

实用函数实现(c++ 11)

//implements relative method - do not use for comparing with zero
//use this most of the time, tolerance needs to be meaningful in your context
template<typename TReal>
static bool isApproximatelyEqual(TReal a, TReal b, TReal tolerance = std::numeric_limits<TReal>::epsilon())
{
    TReal diff = std::fabs(a - b);
    if (diff <= tolerance)
        return true;

    if (diff < std::fmax(std::fabs(a), std::fabs(b)) * tolerance)
        return true;

    return false;
}

//supply tolerance that is meaningful in your context
//for example, default tolerance may not work if you are comparing double with float
template<typename TReal>
static bool isApproximatelyZero(TReal a, TReal tolerance = std::numeric_limits<TReal>::epsilon())
{
    if (std::fabs(a) <= tolerance)
        return true;
    return false;
}


//use this when you want to be on safe side
//for example, don't start rover unless signal is above 1
template<typename TReal>
static bool isDefinitelyLessThan(TReal a, TReal b, TReal tolerance = std::numeric_limits<TReal>::epsilon())
{
    TReal diff = a - b;
    if (diff < tolerance)
        return true;

    if (diff < std::fmax(std::fabs(a), std::fabs(b)) * tolerance)
        return true;

    return false;
}
template<typename TReal>
static bool isDefinitelyGreaterThan(TReal a, TReal b, TReal tolerance = std::numeric_limits<TReal>::epsilon())
{
    TReal diff = a - b;
    if (diff > tolerance)
        return true;

    if (diff > std::fmax(std::fabs(a), std::fabs(b)) * tolerance)
        return true;

    return false;
}

//implements ULP method
//use this when you are only concerned about floating point precision issue
//for example, if you want to see if a is 1.0 by checking if its within
//10 closest representable floating point numbers around 1.0.
template<typename TReal>
static bool isWithinPrecisionInterval(TReal a, TReal b, unsigned int interval_size = 1)
{
    TReal min_a = a - (a - std::nextafter(a, std::numeric_limits<TReal>::lowest())) * interval_size;
    TReal max_a = a + (std::nextafter(a, std::numeric_limits<TReal>::max()) - a) * interval_size;

    return min_a <= b && max_a >= b;
}

Qt实现了两个函数,也许你可以从中学到一些东西:

static inline bool qFuzzyCompare(double p1, double p2)
{
    return (qAbs(p1 - p2) <= 0.000000000001 * qMin(qAbs(p1), qAbs(p2)));
}

static inline bool qFuzzyCompare(float p1, float p2)
{
    return (qAbs(p1 - p2) <= 0.00001f * qMin(qAbs(p1), qAbs(p2)));
}

您可能需要以下函数,因为

请注意,比较p1或p2为0.0的值是无效的, 也不会比较其中一个值为NaN或无穷大的值。 如果其中一个值总是0.0,则使用qFuzzyIsNull代替。如果一个人 其中的值很可能是0.0,一种解决方案是将两者都加上1.0 值。

static inline bool qFuzzyIsNull(double d)
{
    return qAbs(d) <= 0.000000000001;
}

static inline bool qFuzzyIsNull(float f)
{
    return qAbs(f) <= 0.00001f;
}
/// testing whether two doubles are almost equal. We consider two doubles
/// equal if the difference is within the range [0, epsilon).
///
/// epsilon: a positive number (supposed to be small)
///
/// if either x or y is 0, then we are comparing the absolute difference to
/// epsilon.
/// if both x and y are non-zero, then we are comparing the relative difference
/// to epsilon.
bool almost_equal(double x, double y, double epsilon)
{
    double diff = x - y;
    if (x != 0 && y != 0){
        diff = diff/y; 
    }

    if (diff < epsilon && -1.0*diff < epsilon){
        return true;
    }
    return false;
}

我在我的小项目中使用了这个函数,它是有效的,但注意以下几点:

双精度误差可以为你制造惊喜。假设epsilon = 1.0e-6,那么根据上面的代码,1.0和1.000001不应该被认为是相等的,但在我的机器上,函数认为它们是相等的,这是因为1.000001不能精确地转换为二进制格式,它可能是1.0000009xxx。我用1.0和1.0000011测试了它,这次我得到了预期的结果。

Why not perform bitwise XOR? Two floating point numbers are equal if their corresponding bits are equal. I think, the decision to place the exponent bits before mantissa was made to speed up comparison of two floats. I think, many answers here are missing the point of epsilon comparison. Epsilon value only depends on to what precision floating point numbers are compared. For example, after doing some arithmetic with floats you get two numbers: 2.5642943554342 and 2.5642943554345. They are not equal, but for the solution only 3 decimal digits matter so then they are equal: 2.564 and 2.564. In this case you choose epsilon equal to 0.001. Epsilon comparison is also possible with bitwise XOR. Correct me if I am wrong.

正如其他人所指出的那样,使用固定指数(例如0.0000001)对于远离该值的值是无用的。例如,如果你的两个值是10000.000977和10000,那么这两个数字之间没有32位浮点值——10000和10000.000977是你可能得到的最接近的值,而不是位对位相同。这里,小于0.0009是没有意义的;你也可以使用直接等式运算符。

同样地,当两个值的大小接近ε时,相对误差增长到100%。

Thus, trying to mix a fixed point number such as 0.00001 with floating-point values (where the exponent is arbitrary) is a pointless exercise. This will only ever work if you can be assured that the operand values lie within a narrow domain (that is, close to some specific exponent), and if you properly select an epsilon value for that specific test. If you pull a number out of the air ("Hey! 0.00001 is small, so that must be good!"), you're doomed to numerical errors. I've spent plenty of time debugging bad numerical code where some poor schmuck tosses in random epsilon values to make yet another test case work.

如果你从事任何类型的数值编程,并认为你需要达到定点的epsilon,请阅读BRUCE关于比较浮点数的文章。

浮点数比较