Radio UserLand loop has my head spinning

I've run into some unexpected behavior in UserTalk while documenting loop loops for Radio UserLand Kick Start.

The following code ends up with a final displayed value of 3.4 in the About Radio UserLand dialog box:

loop (local (i = 0.1); i <= 3.5; i = i + 0.1) {

  msg (i)

}

If anyone can explain why the final output isn't 3.5, as I expected, I've begun a discussion on the radio-dev mailing list.

Radio Userland · Salon Blogs · 2003/06/24 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

Comments

I would guess that it's due to the inaccuracy of floating point math.

Interestingly, my copy of Radio Userland 8.0.8 for Mac OS X does return 3.5 when I run that code in a QuickScript.

#1 · Kip DeGraaf · 2003/06/24

http://disturbance.dhs.org/images/vic20bug.gif

Hah.

#2 · astro · 2003/06/25