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javascriptnumbersminzero

Why is the minimal value greater than zero?

I was just testing numbers in JavaScript when I noticed something weird occurring.

Why is Number.MIN_VALUE greater than 0? I expected it to be a very small negative value.

console.log(Number.MIN_VALUE > 0);

Is there some mathematics behind it, or is it a JavaScript precision error?

Solution

  • The value of Number.MIN_VALUE is equal to 5e-324. This can be shown below.

    console.log(Number.MIN_VALUE);

    As you can see, the value is 5e-324.

    This is the smallest positive number that can be shown within float precision (float precision is relating to the 0.1 + 0.2 bug).

    This is as close as you can get to 0.

    The technical smallest value is Number.NEGATIVE_INFINITY.

    console.log(Number.NEGATIVE_INFINITY);

    However, this isn't really "numerical", as the value is -Infinity, which can't be represented with a clear number.