Date: Mon, 24 May 93 16:13:56 EDT From: peprbv AT cfa0 DOT harvard DOT edu (Bob Babcock) To: fine AT main1 DOT jinr DOT dubna DOT su Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu Subject: Wrong cos() ??? > COS(X)= 7.83951354E-15 computed by IBM PC 486/25 MSDOS v.5.0 + DJGPP > 7.34169098E-16 computed by IBM/VM > 7.34169098E-16 computed by VAX/VMS > Does anybody know how could one work around this problem? What problem? You are approximating cos(-20.5*pi), which is zero, on machines with different floating point hardware. All get the "wrong" answer, but the errors are small compared to the -1 to +1 range possible from the cos function. The only surprising thing is that the VAX and IBM/VM results agree.