Java Double value = 0.01 changes to 0.009999999999

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Why not use Double or Float to represent currency?

I'm writing a basic command-line program in Java for my high school course. We're only working with variables right now. It's used to calculate the amount of bills and coins of whatever type in your change after a purchase. This is my program:

class Assign2c {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        double cost = 10.990;
        int paid = 20;
        double change = paid - cost;
        int five, toonie, loonies, quarter, dime, nickel, penny;

        five = (int)(change / 5.0);
        change -= five * 5.0;

        toonie = (int)(change / 2.0);
        change -= toonie * 2.0;

        loonies = (int)change;
        change -= loonies;

        quarter = (int)(change / 0.25);
        change -= quarter * 0.25;

        dime = (int)(change / 0.1);
        change -= dime * 0.1;

        nickel = (int)(change / 0.05);
        change -= nickel * 0.05;

        penny = (int)(change * 100);
        change -= penny * 0.01;

        System.out.println("$5   :" + five);
        System.out.println("$2   :" + toonie);
        System.out.println("$1   :" + loonies);
        System.out.println("$0.25:" + quarter);
        System.out.println("$0.10:" + dime);
        System.out.println("$0.05:" + nickel);
        System.out.println("$0.01:" + penny);
    }
}

It should all work but at the last step when there's $0.01 leftover, number of pennies should be 1 but instead, it's 0. After a few minutes of stepping into the code and outputting the change value to the console, I've found out that at the last step when change = 0.01, it changes to 0.009999999999999787. Why is this happening?

Answer 1

doubles aren't kept in decimal internally, but in binary. Their storage format is equivalent to something like "100101 multiplied by 10000" (I'm simplifying, but that's the basic idea). Unfortunately, there's no combination of these binary values that works out to exactly decimal 0.01, which is what the other answers mean when they say that floating point numbers aren't 100% accurate, or that 0.01 doesn't have an exact representation in floating point.

There are various ways of dealing with this problem, some more complicated than others. The best solution in your case is probably to use ints everywhere and keep the values in cents.

Answer 2

0.01 does not have an exact representation in floating-point (and neither do 0.1 nor 0.2, for that matter).

You should probably do all your maths with integer types, representing the number of pennies.