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

General-purpose comparison of floating-point numbers is generally meaningless. How to compare really depends on a problem at hand. In many problems, numbers are sufficiently discretized to allow comparing them within a given tolerance. Unfortunately, there are just as many problems, where such trick doesn't really work. For one example, consider working with a Heaviside (step) function of a number in question (digital stock options come to mind) when your observations are very close to the barrier. Performing tolerance-based comparison wouldn't do much good, as it would effectively shift the issue from the original barrier to two new ones. Again, there is no general-purpose solution for such problems and the particular solution might require going as far as changing the numerical method in order to achieve stability.

其他回答

/// 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。

我的课程是基于之前发布的答案。非常类似于谷歌的代码,但我使用了一个偏差,将所有NaN值推到0xFF000000以上。这样可以更快地检查NaN。

这段代码是为了演示概念,而不是通用的解决方案。谷歌的代码已经展示了如何计算所有平台特定的值,我不想复制所有这些。我对这段代码做了有限的测试。

typedef unsigned int   U32;
//  Float           Memory          Bias (unsigned)
//  -----           ------          ---------------
//   NaN            0xFFFFFFFF      0xFF800001
//   NaN            0xFF800001      0xFFFFFFFF
//  -Infinity       0xFF800000      0x00000000 ---
//  -3.40282e+038   0xFF7FFFFF      0x00000001    |
//  -1.40130e-045   0x80000001      0x7F7FFFFF    |
//  -0.0            0x80000000      0x7F800000    |--- Valid <= 0xFF000000.
//   0.0            0x00000000      0x7F800000    |    NaN > 0xFF000000
//   1.40130e-045   0x00000001      0x7F800001    |
//   3.40282e+038   0x7F7FFFFF      0xFEFFFFFF    |
//   Infinity       0x7F800000      0xFF000000 ---
//   NaN            0x7F800001      0xFF000001
//   NaN            0x7FFFFFFF      0xFF7FFFFF
//
//   Either value of NaN returns false.
//   -Infinity and +Infinity are not "close".
//   -0 and +0 are equal.
//
class CompareFloat{
public:
    union{
        float     m_f32;
        U32       m_u32;
    };
    static bool   CompareFloat::IsClose( float A, float B, U32 unitsDelta = 4 )
                  {
                      U32    a = CompareFloat::GetBiased( A );
                      U32    b = CompareFloat::GetBiased( B );

                      if ( (a > 0xFF000000) || (b > 0xFF000000) )
                      {
                          return( false );
                      }
                      return( (static_cast<U32>(abs( a - b ))) < unitsDelta );
                  }
    protected:
    static U32    CompareFloat::GetBiased( float f )
                  {
                      U32    r = ((CompareFloat*)&f)->m_u32;

                      if ( r & 0x80000000 )
                      {
                          return( ~r - 0x007FFFFF );
                      }
                      return( r + 0x7F800000 );
                  }
};

在数值软件中,确实有这样的情况,你需要检查两个浮点数是否完全相等。我就一个类似的问题发表了这篇文章

https://stackoverflow.com/a/10973098/1447411

所以你不能说“CompareDoubles1”是错误的。

使用任何其他建议都要非常小心。这完全取决于上下文。

我花了很长时间在一个系统中追踪错误,该系统假设|a-b|<epsilon,则a==b。潜在的问题是:

The implicit presumption in an algorithm that if a==b and b==c then a==c. Using the same epsilon for lines measured in inches and lines measured in mils (.001 inch). That is a==b but 1000a!=1000b. (This is why AlmostEqual2sComplement asks for the epsilon or max ULPS). The use of the same epsilon for both the cosine of angles and the length of lines! Using such a compare function to sort items in a collection. (In this case using the builtin C++ operator == for doubles produced correct results.)

就像我说的,这完全取决于上下文和a和b的预期大小。

顺便说一下,std::numeric_limits<double>::epsilon()是“机器epsilon”。它是1.0和下一个用double表示的值之间的差值。我猜它可以用在比较函数中,但只有当期望值小于1时。(这是对@cdv的回答的回应…)

同样,如果你的int算术是双精度的(这里我们在某些情况下使用双精度来保存int值),你的算术是正确的。例如,4.0/2.0将等同于1.0+1.0。只要你不做导致分数(4.0/3.0)的事情,或者不超出int的大小。

我为java编写这篇文章,但是您可能会发现它很有用。它使用长变量而不是双变量,但会处理nan、亚法线等。

public static boolean equal(double a, double b) {
    final long fm = 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFL;       // fraction mask
    final long sm = 0x8000000000000000L;    // sign mask
    final long cm = 0x8000000000000L;       // most significant decimal bit mask
    long c = Double.doubleToLongBits(a), d = Double.doubleToLongBits(b);        
    int ea = (int) (c >> 52 & 2047), eb = (int) (d >> 52 & 2047);
    if (ea == 2047 && (c & fm) != 0 || eb == 2047 && (d & fm) != 0) return false;   // NaN 
    if (c == d) return true;                            // identical - fast check
    if (ea == 0 && eb == 0) return true;                // ±0 or subnormals
    if ((c & sm) != (d & sm)) return false;             // different signs
    if (abs(ea - eb) > 1) return false;                 // b > 2*a or a > 2*b
    d <<= 12; c <<= 12;
    if (ea < eb) c = c >> 1 | sm;
    else if (ea > eb) d = d >> 1 | sm;
    c -= d;
    return c < 65536 && c > -65536;     // don't use abs(), because:
    // There is a posibility c=0x8000000000000000 which cannot be converted to positive
}
public static boolean zero(double a) { return (Double.doubleToLongBits(a) >> 52 & 2047) < 3; }

请记住,在一些浮点运算之后,number可能与我们期望的非常不同。没有代码可以解决这个问题。