> I think it's probably related to the fact that printf() doesn't have any format specifiers for float that do What You Really Want, which is: print the shortest number that will parse back to the right value.
Lots of language support the proper behaviour these days. Haskell/ghc does, for example.
> Historically, the Python prompt and built-in repr() function would choose the one with 17 significant digits, 0.10000000000000001. Starting with Python 3.1, Python (on most systems) is now able to choose the shortest of these and simply display 0.1.
Lots of language support the proper behaviour these days. Haskell/ghc does, for example.
[https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/floatingpoint.html]:
> Historically, the Python prompt and built-in repr() function would choose the one with 17 significant digits, 0.10000000000000001. Starting with Python 3.1, Python (on most systems) is now able to choose the shortest of these and simply display 0.1.