[Bioperl-l] evalues/floating point tests

[Chris Fields]

I've noticed an odd issue when testing BioPerl on WinXP yesterday  
which doesn't appear to be popping up anywhere else.  When comparing  
floating point numbers, several tests fail like the following:

#   Failed test at t\SearchIO\blast_pull.t line 40.
#          got: '1e-23'
#     expected: '1e-023'

#   Failed test at t\SearchIO\blast_pull.t line 67.
#          got: '6e-59'
#     expected: '6e-059'

These are generally in lines like (for the example above)

is $result->get_parameter('expect'), 1e-23;

I'm adding a method to Bio::Root::Test for comparing two floating  
point numbers based on equality:

float_eq $float1, $float2, $message;

This basically wraps is() but runs both values through 'sprintf("%g",  
$foo)' prior to the comparison; it has a prototype requiring two  
values to be passed and an optional message.  Any objections to the  
method name or adding this in?  I've already converted many of the  
tests in t/SearchIO over but wanted to pass it by the group prior to  
an actual commit.

chris