Java Coding Problems

36. Next floating-point value

Having an integer value such as 10 makes it very easy for us to obtain the next integer-point value, such as 10+1 (in the direction of positive infinity) or 10-1 (in the direction of negative infinity). Trying to achieve the same thing for float or double is not that easy as it is for integers.

Starting with JDK 6, the Math class has been enriched with the nextAfter() method. This method takes two arguments—the initial number (float or double) and the direction (Float/Double.NEGATIVE/POSITIVE_INFINITY)—and returns the next floating-point value. Here, it is a flavor of this method to return the next-floating point adjacent to 0.1 in the direction of negative infinity:

float f = 0.1f;// 0.099999994float nextf = ...