One thing to note is that by putting a value in a TDML document such as 
"12.34e56" it is actually a string. Comparing that to a floating-point value is 
going to require a conversion from string and that could invoke a rounding step 
if it cannot be accurately represented by a float. If you really want to 
compare two floating points exactly, using a binary representation is probably 
the best such as putting in something like 0x1234p56. At least that is how I 
think I understand it. Floating point math is a deep rabbit hole that can be 
followed. That is probably overkill for TDML. 

// Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Lawrence <slawre...@apache.org> 
Sent: Monday, September 25, 2023 08:07
To: dev@daffodil.apache.org
Subject: Re: Comparing Floating Point numbers

+1 for type aware comparisons. It should be a very small change to this 
function:

https://github.com/apache/daffodil/blob/main/daffodil-lib/src/main/scala/org/apache/daffodil/lib/xml/XMLUtils.scala#L1098

And just need to add xsi:type to a few expected infosets that are 
sensitive to the issue.

Note that I *think* this might be the bug that caused the change:

https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-4511638

Based on that, it sounds like the issue is that Java wasn't creating the 
shortest possible decimal representation, but the representation it did 
create still parses back to the same floating point representation. So 
we *probably* don't even really need epsilon comparison, we just need 
type aware comparison, and can still expect the floating point values to 
be exactly the same.

Although epsilon comparison is the right way to compare floats, my 
concern is that we might add some bug in Daffodil where we do math wrong 
and end up with a very very very slightly wrong answer and it would be 
hidden. But if our epsilon is small enough, maybe that amount precision 
error is fine?

Note that according to that JDK issue, the change was made in Java 19, 
so if we add any conditional logic on java version, we should check if 
it's at least 19. I guess if we do need epsilon comparisons we could 
only do it for java 19 and newer. Older versions would expect exact 
values and so would catch any off by very very small amount bugs. That 
might be adding unnecessary complication though.


On 2023-09-24 12:09 PM, Mike Beckerle wrote:
> So Java 21 produces different floating point values in a few cases. Some of
> our tests (4) are sensitive to this.
> 
> The "right way" to compare floating point numbers is like this:
> 
> If(Math.abs(A - B) < epsilon)
> 
> The TDML runner has outstanding bug
> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/DAFFODIL-2402 which is to add the
> ability to put xsi:type="double" for example on the expected infoset, and
> this instructructs the (schema unaware) TDML runner to do comparison using
> some sort of epsilon comparison like the above
> 
> Does that seem like the right fix for this?
> 
> The only alternative I can think of is some sort of conditional infoset
> construction, so that the expected values can vary for different JVMs.
> 
> On Sat, Sep 23, 2023 at 2:13 PM Mike Beckerle <mbecke...@apache.org> wrote:
> 
>>
>> JVM 21 LTS is now out.
>>
>> So I decided to try to building Daffodil using it. My WIP PR is
>> https://github.com/apache/daffodil/pull/1090
>>
>> It looks pretty close.
>>
>> The --release 8 option for javac is now deprecated. So I conditionalized
>> that.
>> Fixed some deprecated calls.
>>
>> Remaining issues:
>>
>> 2 more deprecated calls (hence fatal warnings turned off for now)
>>
>> 5 tests fail. One each in these 3 test classes
>>
>> org.apache.daffodil.TresysTests.test_BG000
>>
>> org.apache.daffodil.section13.text_number_props.TestTextNumberProps.test_textNumberPattern_exponent01
>>
>>
>> org.apache.daffodil.section05.simple_types.TestSimpleTypes.test_double_binary_06
>>
>> All 3 of those failures are floating point related like this: (highlighted
>> digit isn't output any more)
>>
>> [error] Expected (attributes stripped)
>> [error]    <d_02>9.8765432109876544E16</d_02>
>> [error] Actual (attributes ignored for diff)
>> [error] <ex:d_02>9.876543210987654E16</ex:d_02>
>>
>> The Expected has one more digit 4 at the end.
>>
>> 1 other test failure is for reasons unknown. Possible change in regex
>> behavior?
>>
>>
>> org.apache.daffodil.io.layers.TestJavaIOStreams.testBase64ScanningForDelimiter1
>>
>> One CLI test failure:
>>
>>
>> org.apache.daffodil.cli.cliTest.TestEXIEncodeDecode.test_CLI_Encode_Decode_EXI
>>
>>
>>
> 

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