READERS' FEEDBACK
Rounding Numbers
In using the simple program below, I encountered a (possible) bug in Applesoft's handling of variables. After the program is RUN, and an input of 3,4,5 is given (a known right triangle), I get an output of "NO". When I PRINT X and D, I get 5 and 5, respectively. But when I PRINT X = D, I get a response of zero, meaning "false." Is this a known error, or is this a bug in my program?

1 PRINT"THIS PROGRAM WILL DETERMINE THE "
2 PRINT"PYTHAGOREAN TRIPLE"
3 PRINT"INPUT 3 NUMBERS"
10 INPUT A,B,D
40 X=SQR((A*A)+(B*B))
50 IF D=X THEN INVERSE:PRINT"YES":GOTO 70
55 INVERSE
60 PRINT"NO"
70 NORMAL:GOTO 1

The problem that you speak of here is common to most forms of BASIC and has to do with the manner in which computers handle real numbers. A very small calculation error will occur in some instances.
    In your example, the number that is calculated for X on the Apple is slightly more than 5 (5.000000002, actually). PRINT X-D to see this difference after RUNning the program.
    Before the Apple prints a value for X, it rounds this number to 9 digits and drops trailing zeroes so that 5.00000000 appears on your screen as 5. Internally, the Apple stores this number with greater precision (Recall that X was not equal to D in your example).
    A way to get around this problem is to convert numeric values to strings and then compare the strings. In this way, the small calculation error is not seen. In your program, line 50 would then read: