Background
Matlab's built-in eps
function [1] can take a numeric value X
and return "the positive distance from abs(X)
to the next larger in magnitude floating point number of the same precision".
>> eps(1)
ans =
2.2204e-16
>> eps(single(1))
ans =
1.1921e-07
>> eps(1e6)
ans =
1.1642e-10
>> eps(single(1e6))
ans =
0.0625
Equivalently, Numpy provides the spacing
function [2]:
In [18]: import numpy as np
In [19]: np.spacing(1)
Out[19]: 2.2204460492503131e-16
In [20]: np.spacing(np.single(1))
Out[20]: 1.1920929e-07
In [21]: np.spacing(1e6)
Out[21]: 1.1641532182693481e-10
In [22]: np.spacing(np.single(1e6))
Out[22]: 0.0625
Question
Is there an equivalent function in Java (and therefore JVM languages like Clojure)?
References
- [1] http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/eps.html
- [2] Documentation at https://github.com/numpy/numpy/blob/master/numpy/core/code_generators/ufunc_docstrings.py#L2905.
- The actual function implementation in C seems to be at https://github.com/numpy/numpy/blob/master/numpy/core/src/npymath/ieee754.c.src#L323 (the license banner before npy_nextafter gives my question some irony).