Get next smallest Double number

Question

As part of a unit test, I need to test some boundary conditions. One method accepts a System.Double argument.

Is there a way to get the next-smalles

Answer 1

The Wikipedia page on double-precision floating point is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_precision_floating-point_format

For fun I wrote some code to break out the binary representation of the double format, decrements the mantissa and recomposes the resultant double. Because of the implicit bit in the mantissa we have to check for it and modify the exponent accordingly, and it might fail near the limits.

Here's the code:

public static double PrevDouble(double src)
{
    // check for special values:
    if (double.IsInfinity(src) || double.IsNaN(src))
        return src;
    if (src == 0)
        return -double.MinValue;

    // get bytes from double
    byte[] srcbytes = System.BitConverter.GetBytes(src);

    // extract components
    byte sign = (byte)(srcbytes[7] & 0x80);
    ulong exp = ((((ulong)srcbytes[7]) & 0x7F) << 4) + (((ulong)srcbytes[6] >> 4) & 0x0F);
    ulong mant = ((ulong)1 << 52) | (((ulong)srcbytes[6] & 0x0F) << 48) | (((ulong)srcbytes[5]) << 40) | (((ulong)srcbytes[4]) << 32) | (((ulong)srcbytes[3]) << 24) | (((ulong)srcbytes[2]) << 16) | (((ulong)srcbytes[1]) << 8) | ((ulong)srcbytes[0]);

    // decrement mantissa
    --mant;

    // check if implied bit has been removed and shift if so
    if ((mant & ((ulong)1 << 52)) == 0)
    {
        mant <<= 1;
        exp--;
    }

    // build byte representation of modified value
    byte[] bytes = new byte[8];
    bytes[7] = (byte)((ulong)sign | ((exp >> 4) & 0x7F));
    bytes[6] = (byte)((((ulong)exp & 0x0F) << 4) | ((mant >> 48) & 0x0F));
    bytes[5] = (byte)((mant >> 40) & 0xFF);
    bytes[4] = (byte)((mant >> 32) & 0xFF);
    bytes[3] = (byte)((mant >> 24) & 0xFF);
    bytes[2] = (byte)((mant >> 16) & 0xFF);
    bytes[1] = (byte)((mant >> 8) & 0xFF);
    bytes[0] = (byte)(mant & 0xFF);

    // convert back to double and return
    double res = System.BitConverter.ToDouble(bytes, 0);
    return res;
}

All of which gives you a value that is different from the initial value by a change in the lowest bit of the mantissa... in theory :)

Here's a test:

public static Main(string[] args)
{
    double test = 1.0/3;
    double prev = PrevDouble(test);
    Console.WriteLine("{0:r}, {1:r}, {2:r}", test, prev, test - prev);
}

Gives the following results on my PC:

0.33333333333333331, 0.33333333333333326, 5.5511151231257827E-17

The difference is there, but is probably below the rounding threshold. The expression test == prev evaluates to false though, and there is an actual difference as shown above :)