Go: proposal: math: add `IsDivisible(float64, float64) bool`

[AyushG3112]

In the application I'm working on, I came across a requirement to find out whether one float was divisible by another. I tried doing this by using the math.Mod and math.Remainder method to check if the result == 0.0.

package main

import "fmt"
import "math"

func main() {
  fmt.Println(math.Remainder(2000.0, 0.01))
  fmt.Println(math.Mod(2000.0, 0.01))
}

As you can see in this playground sample, neither of those work perfectly. While I was able to hack away the problem by a rather cumbersome hack, I think it would be pretty useful if the go standard library provides a method to check if a float is divisible by another.

[ianlancetaylor]

What about something like x := f1 / f2; if math.Floor(x) == x { /* divisible */}. Is there a better way to write IsDivisible?

[AyushG3112]

@ianlancetaylor possibly not, quite a simple solution too, thanks!

I would still like to keep this proposal open to discuss if it's worth incorporating that logic(or any other according to some standard) into the go standard library as a nice-to-have feature if the proposal is accepted, though.

[as]

I hope there is a better way, because it returns false negatives. The correct answer below is true because 11.1 / 0.1 = 111 and Floor(111) == 111, but the implementation returns false.

package main

import . "math"

func Divides(f1, f2 float64) bool {
    x := f1 / f2
    return Floor(x) == x // 2 != 2.9999999999999996

}

func main() { println(Divides(11.1, 0.1)) }

(For bike shedding purposes, I also dislike the name IsDivisible)

[AyushG3112]

The hacky solution I use can be found here

For verbosity's sake, here's the solution:

func IsDivisible(num float64, den float64) bool {
    partsA := strings.Split(strconv.FormatFloat(num, 'f', -1, 64), ".")
    partsB := strings.Split(strconv.FormatFloat(den, 'f', -1, 64), ".")
    maxDecimalPlaces := 0.0
    if len(partsA) == 2 {
        maxDecimalPlaces = float64(len(partsA[1]))
    }
    if len(partsB) == 2 {
        maxDecimalPlaces = math.Max(float64(len(partsB[1])), maxDecimalPlaces)
    }
    n := num * math.Pow(10, maxDecimalPlaces)
    d := den * math.Pow(10, maxDecimalPlaces)
    return int64(n)%int64(d) == 0
}

I know it's not the most performant or efficient one, but it hasn't given me any false positives yet.

[as]

@AyushG3112 that panics on inputs like 3, 1/3
https://play.golang.org/p/oIE-wn8c__N

[AyushG3112]

@as ah I see. The source for my inputs is a JSON so I never tested that.

[AyushG3112]

@as actually, 1/3 is evaluated to 0 because 1 and 3 and ints, that's why it panics. 1.0/3.0 returns false.

[as]

@AyushG3112 good catch, I don't think a function operating on float64 values should panic though. In this implementation, the operation q := a/d sets q to math.NaN if d == 0. We only see a panic on integer values, not floats.

Also Divides(0, n) returns true (try n = 144), which is questionable.

[AyushG3112]

@as technically, 0 is divisible by all numbers, so Divides(0, n) returning true is OK I believe.

Maybe we could treat the denominator being 0 as a special case, and change the method signature to:

func Divides(float64, float64) bool, error

and return an error if needed.

[ALTree]

The IEEE754 floating point number 11.1 is not divisible by the IEEE754 floating point number 0.1

You are discussing about a function that is supposed to work with Go's float64 types, but also expect the same results you would get if you were manipulating purely ideal Real numbers. This is a bad idea.

[as]

@AyushG3112

technically, 0 is divisible by all numbers, so Divides(0, n) returning true is OK I believe.

By that definition 0|0

@ALTree
Isn't this also true for 2000.0? The number 0.1 is not a machine number.
fmt.Printf("%.55f\n", float64(0.1)) // 0.1000000000000000055511151231257827021181583404541015625

It doesn't seem like this proposal is reasonable without some kind of fuzz parameter

[rsc]

This is not well-defined, as the commenters have pointed out. IsDivisible couldn't possibly do better than math.Mod(x,y) == 0, which you can already write. (And doesn't give the right answer for 2000, 0.01, because 0.01 is more precisely 0.01000000000000000020816681711721685132943093776702880859375.