Troubleshooting Matlab Loops: Discovering a Simple Solution | Get Help Now

[mikaili]

I have recently found a silly problem with Matlab loop
try the following simple program :
>> clear all
>> for s=0:0.1:1
>> V(10*s+1)=s;
>> end
it will get into trouble when s reaches 0.6

would anybody please check and let me know the result

 

[Mark44]

I don't have Matlab, so I can't check to see what happens. I suspect that you run into a problem with the index of the array V not being an integer.

If this is the problem you're having, the reason it's happening is that certain numbers that have a nice, neat representation in decimal fractions aren't represented exactly as binary real numbers. One decimal fraction in particular that has this problem is 0.1.

A binary fraction as used in many programming languages uses powers of 1/2. For example, you could think of 3/4 as being represented as .11, meaning 1 * 1/2 + 1 * (1/2)^2. The actual representation is a bit more complicated, but this is the idea.

Just as 1/3 requires an infinite number of decimal places to represent, so does 1/10 as a binary fraction. Since computers don't have an infinite amount of storage available, what you get for the representation of 1/10 in binary is a number that is close, but not exactly correct. The problem gets worse if you add 1/10 to itself a few times, such as what happens in your loop. Apparently, by the time s is .6, the accumulated error is enough so that 10*s + 1 comes out to something like 6.99 or so, instead of 7, and then Matlab complains because you are trying to access an array with an index that isn't an integer.

 

[mikaili]

Thanks Mark44 , Your answer was convincing . Actually when I checked s-fix(s) it was a number in the range of 1*10^-16