decimal_truth: Safer Decimal Number (In)Equality Testing Operators

In tinycodet: Functions to Help in your Coding Etiquette

Safer Decimal Number (In)Equality Testing Operators

Description

The %d==%, %d!=% %d<%, %d>%, %d<=%, %d>=% (in)equality operators perform decimal (type "double") number truth testing.
They are virtually equivalent to the regular (in)equality operators,
==, !=, <, >, <=, >=,
except for 2 aspects:

1. The decimal number (in)equality operators assume that if the absolute difference between any 2 numbers x and y is smaller than the Machine tolerance, sqrt(.Machine$double.eps), then x and y should be consider to be equal.
   For example: (0.1 * 7) == 0.7 returns FALSE, even though they are equal, due to the way decimal numbers are stored in programming languages like 'R' and 'Python'.
   But (0.1 * 7) %d==% 0.7 returns TRUE.
   

2. Only numeric input is allowed, so characters are not coerced to numbers.
   I.e. 1 < "a" gives TRUE, whereas 1 %d<% "a" gives an error.
   For character equality testing, see %s==% from the 'stringi' package.
   

Thus these operators provide safer decimal number (in)equality tests.

There are also the x %d{}% bnd and x %d!{}% bnd operators, where bnd is a vector of length 2, or a 2-column matrix (nrow(bnd)==length(x) or nrow(bnd)==1).
The x %d{}% bnd operator checks if x is within the closed interval with bounds defined by bnd.
The x %d!{}% bnd operator checks if x is outside the closed interval with bounds defined by bnd.

Moreover, the function is_wholenumber() is added, to safely test for whole numbers.

Usage

x %d==% y

x %d!=% y

x %d<% y

x %d>% y

x %d<=% y

x %d>=% y

x %d{}% bnd

x %d!{}% bnd

is_wholenumber(x, tol = sqrt(.Machine$double.eps))

Arguments

x, y	numeric vectors, matrices, or arrays.
bnd	either a vector of length 2, or a matrix with 2 columns and 1 row, or else a matrix with 2 columns where nrow(bnd)==length(x) (or can be recycled to be nrow(bnd)==length(x)). The first element/column of bnd gives the lower bound of the closed interval; The second element/column of bnd gives the upper bound of the closed interval.
tol	a single, strictly positive number close to zero, giving the tolerance.

Details

The operators described in this page are defined in terms of the existing base Logic operators, and should therefore be compatible with (S3) classes that have method dispatches defined for relational operators.

Value

For the %d...% operators:
A logical vector with the same dimensions as x, indicating the result of the element by element comparison.
NOTE: Inf by Inf and -Inf by -Inf comparisons with the %d...% operators return NA.

For is_wholenumber():
A logical vector with the same dimensions as x, indicating the result of the element by element comparison.
NOTE: Inf, -Inf, NaN and NA all return NA for is_wholenumber().

See Also

tinycodet_safer

Examples

x <- c(0.3, 0.6, 0.7)
y <- c(0.1 * 3, 0.1 * 6, 0.1 * 7)
print(x)
print(y)

x == y # gives FALSE, but should be TRUE
x != y # gives TRUE, should be FALSE
x > y # not wrong
x < y # gives TRUE, should be FALSE

# same as above, but here the results are correct:
x %d==% y # correct
x %d!=% y # correct
x %d<% y # correct
x %d>% y # correct
x %d<=% y # correct
x %d>=% y # correct

# check if numbers are in closed interval:
x <- c(0.3, 0.6, 0.7)
bnd <- cbind(x - 0.1, x + 0.1)
x %d{}% bnd
x %d!{}% bnd

# These operators work for integers also:
x <- 1L:5L
y <- 1L:5L
x %d==% y
x %d!=% y
x %d<% y
x %d>% y
x %d<=% y
x %d>=% y

x <- 1L:5L
y <- x + 1L
x %d==% y
x %d!=% y
x %d<% y
x %d>% y
x %d<=% y
x %d>=% y

x <- 1L:5L
y <- x - 1L
x %d==% y
x %d!=% y
x %d<% y
x %d>% y
x %d<=% y
x %d>=% y

# is_wholenumber:
is_wholenumber(1:10 + c(0, 0.1))

tinycodet documentation built on Feb. 21, 2026, 9:08 a.m.