[Tutor] Comparing Numbers: Equal Numbers are Unequal when compared ?

[Harm_Kirchhoff at mail.digital.co.jp]

I thought it would be interesting to sink the following newbie catch into 
the archieves of this mailing list:

In my code, 2 seemingly equal numbers, return a non-true comparison !

The following code in a program:

    if wwsales <> total[1]:
        print type(wwsales),'/',type(total[1])
        print round(wwsales,2) == round(total[1],2)
        print str(wwsales) == str(total[1])
        print wwsales-total[1]
        print 'cmp:',cmp(wwsales,total[1])
        print 'Country Sales ',wwsales,' differ from total sales 
',total[1]

Produces the following output:

<type 'float'> / <type 'float'>
True
True
2.98023223877e-008
cmp: 1
Country Sales  198970507.478  differ from total sales  198970507.478
As you can see, the floating point numbers seem unequal, however, when 
converted to strings, the resulting strings will be the same.
If rounded, they also are the same. The subtraction shows a slight 
difference, that is apparently not printed so that the printed version of 
both numbers is also the same.

You can avoid this by rounding both numbers before comparison, in case you 
can live with a sligt discrepancy.