Issue 32071 - =SIN(PI()) does not return zero.
Summary: =SIN(PI()) does not return zero.
Status: CONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: Calc
Classification: Application
Component: ui (show other issues)
Version: OOo 1.0.2
Hardware: All All
: P4 Trivial (vote)
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: AOO issues mailing list
QA Contact:
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2004-07-25 20:41 UTC by mars4oil
Modified: 2013-08-07 15:12 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Issue Type: ENHANCEMENT
Latest Confirmation in: ---
Developer Difficulty: ---

Attachments
spreadsheet that illustrates the problem. (5.70 KB, application/vnd.sun.xml.calc)
2004-07-25 20:46 UTC, mars4oil 		no flags Details
Add an attachment (proposed patch, testcase, etc.)

Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this issue.
Description mars4oil 2004-07-25 20:41:26 UTC 
Open up the spread sheet.

paste in "=SIN(PI())" withount the quotes, notice that the value shown is Zero.

paste in "=SIN(PI())=0" withount the quotes, notice that the value shown is FALSE.

If you format the cells as scientific, you will see that the value is actually
1.22E-016, and not zero.
Comment 1 mars4oil 2004-07-25 20:46:50 UTC 
Created attachment 16757 [details]
spreadsheet that illustrates the problem.
Comment 2 frank 2004-07-26 08:54:14 UTC 
Hi Eike,

Excel displays 1.22E-16 as the result instead of 0 as we do.

Frank
Comment 3 ooo 2004-07-26 10:54:24 UTC 
As Frank already mentioned, also Excel doesn't produce 0 as the result. This is
due to the IEEE754 binary representation of floating point numbers and the fact
that PI doesn't have a finite number of decimals places.

Frank, we display zero because the standard number format is "display with two
decimals". One could argue that if the number is smaller than that, a scientific
format could automatically be chosen instead. Do we always want that? =>
decision up to User Experience, reassigning to BH.

Will not be changed for OOo2.0 => Enhancement, P4, OOoLater.

Eike
Comment 4 bettina.haberer 2010-05-21 15:17:15 UTC 
To grep the issues easier via "requirements" I put the issues currently lying on
my owner to the owner "requirements".