Saturday 24 November 2012

Java Cafe 1 : Never write NaN == NaN (they're not equal)

I see this Java bug time and time again:

NaN == NaN

So what's wrong with this?

The Float and Double classes in java.lang defines a constant holding a Not-a-Number (NaN) value of type float and double respectively. NaN can be used to represent a mathematically undefined number, such as that obtained by dividing zero by zero, or an unrepresentable value, such as the square root of a negative number, which is imaginary so cannot be represented as a real floating-point number. For instance:

System.out.println(0.0f / 0.0f);
System.out.println(Math.sqrt(-1.0f));

prints out:

NaN
NaN

Sometimes programmers initialize a class field to NaN to indicate that it has not been assigned a value. Later on in the program, they check if that field has been assigned a value by checking if it is equal to NaN, using the == operator, e.g.:

public class NaNTest {
    private float value = Float.NaN;

    public void setValue(float newValue) {
        if (value == Float.NaN) // wrong, never do this!
            value = newValue;
    }

    public float getValue() { return value; }
}

Unfortunately, value will never be set to newValue in the setValue() method, because (Float.NaN == Float.NaN) always returns false. In fact, if you look at the JDK implementation of Float.isNaN(), a number is not-a-number if it is not equal to itself (which makes sense because a number should be equal to itself). The same holds for Double.NaN.

This error is easy to make, because the == operator is what you will normally use to compare numbers and primitive types. This bug can go unnoticed for a long time, potentially giving disastrous consequences. For instance, if the code that uses the value returned by getValue() performs the same faulty equality check, and then performs some critical operations:

NaNTest test = new NaNTest();
test.setValue(4.0f);           // does not set it 4.0f
float value = test.getValue(); // returns Float.NaN
float result = 0.0f;
if (value != Float.NaN) {
    result = value;
}
System.out.println(result);    // prints NaN

Although not immediately obvious, the printed value will always be NaN, not 4.0. This is because value has the value Float.NaN, and (Float.NaN != Float.NaN) is always true!

The correct way to check if a number is NaN is to use Float.isNaN() and Double.isNaN(). For example, continuing with the NaNTest class:

public void setValue(float newValue) {
    if (Float.isNaN(value))
        value = newValue;

}

Equivalently, this will also work:

public void setValue(float newValue) {
    // works but don't do this
    if (value != value)    // yes, this check is weird!
        value = newValue;
}

but you should use Float.isNaN() and Double.isNaN() because they make clear the intention of the check, and they will work regardless of any changes to the underlying floating-point implementation of Java.

Finally, the same applies to checking for positive and negative infinity: always use Float.isInfinite() and Double.isInfinite().

1 comment:

  1. Great things you’ve always shared with us. Just keep writing this kind of posts.The time which was wasted in traveling for tuition now it can be used for studies.Thanks Places to do homework near me

    ReplyDelete