Where does 1.0f and 1.0 makes difference?

Question

While studying about video compression encoder I came across float rateRatio=1.0f. I want know where does it make difference I mean 1.0f and 1.0?

Answer 1

As other said, one literal is of type float and the other is of type double. Here is an example where it makes a difference:

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
    int a = 16777217 * 1.0f;
    int b = 16777217 * 1.0;

    printf("%d %d\n", a, b);
}

prints on my machine:

16777216 16777217

The expression 16777217 * 1.0f is of type float and 16777217 cannot be represented exactly in a float (in IEEE-754) while it can be represented exactly in a double.

Answer 2

One is a double the other is a float:

double x = 0.0;  // denotes a double
float y  = 0.0f; // denotes a float

It depends on the system but e.g. on Windows you'll find that float has 32bit of precision whereas double has 64bit. This can make a tremendous difference when it comes to precise or numericable unstable calculations.

Answer 3

can we not write float y=0.0

From your comment, I see where the confusion stems from. It's not the data type of the variable assigned to but the data type of literal constant (0.0, 1.0f, 1.0, etc.) itself that matters here. When you write

float f = 1.0;

1.0 a literal of type double while f is a float, hence the compiler does an implicit narrowing conversion to float, the same holds true for double d = 1.0f where it's widening implicit conversion from float to double.

Implicit conversion rules are the reason 16777217 * 1.0f expression (in ouah's answer) becomes a float, since 1.0f is a float and in an expression with both float and int the resulting type is dictated by the standard as a float, thus both are converted to floats, but the resulting value isn't representable as a float and thus you see a different value.

Instead when 1.0f is changed into 1.0 it becomes a double and thus 16777217 * 1.0 expression becomes a double (again because the standard dictates that in an expression with double and any other integral type, the result is a double) which is large enough to hold the value 16777217.