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I'm experiencing some quite unusual results off a simple condition and really need someone else to run this on their machine for a sanity check. Here's the code:

mySEQ <- seq(0.1, 1.0, by = 0.1)
for (s in c(0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 1.0)) { print((s + .1) %in% mySEQ) }
mySEQ[3] == 0.3

Which results in:

> mySEQ <- seq(0.1, 1.0, by = 0.1)
> for (s in c(0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 1.0)) { print(s %in% mySEQ) }
[1] TRUE
[1] TRUE
[1] FALSE
[1] TRUE
[1] TRUE
[1] TRUE
[1] FALSE
[1] TRUE
[1] TRUE
[1] TRUE
> mySEQ[3] == 0.3
[1] FALSE
> mySEQ[3]
[1] 0.3

I am absolutely mystified as to why they don't all print out TRUE. It's as if there's something wrong with 0.3 and 0.7. I updated R and all my packages, but just need someone else to run this to check if it's just me. It appears to be something up with the seq function. Thank you.

giraffehere
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1 Answers1

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This has to do with how floating point numbers are handled in R. You can read the first chapter of "The R Inferno" for the details:

http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/R_inferno.pdf

To answer the question in your example, use all.equal to check the equality of floating point numbers rather than ==.

Mark Timms
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