[postgis-devel] Precision loss issue with &&& operator

[Marios Vodas]

Dear PostGIS hackers,
 
I would like to highlight an issue I discovered while I was trying to use &&& operator with 3D linestrings. The problem is that when comparing two geometries with &&& operator precision is lost if a dimension contains big numbers as coordinates, so the operator returns true instead of false and vice versa. This might be due to rounding but I think it should be fixed since the precision is lost only within the execution of &&& and not when the coordinates are given as input to construct the geometry object; meaning I can see the correct number when use ST_AsText() on the linestring geometry but these numbers are not respected.
 
Here is an example that illustrates this situation: SELECT ST_MakeLine(ST_MakePoint(1,1,1388534401), ST_MakePoint(3,3,1388534403)) &&& ST_MakeLine(ST_MakePoint(1,1,1388534404), ST_MakePoint(3,3,1388534405));
It returns true instead of false!
 
Maybe the error is due to a cast to a 32-bit floating point, e.g.: SELECT 1388534404::real::integer;
 
Marios Vodas
 		 	   		  
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