Dividing 1/n always returns 0.0 [duplicate]
I am trying to calculate p1=(1/1)*(1/2)*...*(1/n)
but something is wrong and the printf
gives me 0.000...0
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void) {
int i,num;
float p3;
do {
printf ("give number N>3 : \n" );
scanf( "%d", &num );
} while( num <= 3 );
i = 1;
p3 = 1;
do {
p3=p3*(1/i);
printf( "%f\n",p3 );
} while ( i <= num );
printf("\nP3=%f",p3);
return 0;
}
Solution 1:
(1/i)
i
is an int
, so that's integer division, resulting in 0 if i > 1
. Use 1.0/i
to get floating point division.
Solution 2:
1
is an integer, i
is an integer. So 1/i
will be an integer, ie the result will be truncated. To perform floating-point division, one of the operands shall be of type float
(or, better, of type double
):
p3 *= 1. / i;
Solution 3:
I had the same issue. The basic case:
-
when you want to get float output from two integers, you need to convert one into float
int c = 15; int b = 8; printf("result is float %f\n", c / (float) b); // result is float 1.875000 printf("result is float %f\n", (float) c / b); // result is float 1.875000