Vector with values from 0 to 15 with 1e-4 step

Hi,

I am creating a vector for storing values from 0 to 15 with a 1e-4 interval:

x = [0:1e-4:15];

When displaying the values with the default format ("format short"), everything seems ok. For example, the value of x(143274) is displayed as 14.3273. However, when using the "format long" command, the value shown for x(143274) is 14.327299999999999 instead of 14.327300000000000. Why is this small difference being shown? I was expecting the difference between each value in the vector to be exactly 0.000100000000000 (which is not the case, for example, if one calculates x(143274)-x(143273) in the command window).

Thanks,

Alexandre

[Stephen23]

x = [0:1e-4:15];
%   ^         ^ superfluous square brackets.

Square brackets are a concatenation operator. You are not concatenating anything together here, so those square brackets do nothing (except mislead). Get rid of them.

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/35676-why-not-use-square-brackets

[Alexandre Englert]

Thank you for the hint.

Answer 1

[the cyclist]

Because they are floating-point numbers, and cannot be represented exactly on a binary computer.

Take a look at this answer for a bit more detail, and links to even more detail.

[Alexandre Englert]

Thank you for your answer and the interesting links.