Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Large integer precision error in Bash command output rendering

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 41 posts

Re: Large integer precision error in Bash command output rendering

#3

Post by timenotwasted »

Claude Code v2.0.37 Haiku 4.5 · Claude Pro

> run cmd echo '348555896224571969'

I'll run that echo command for you.

Bash(echo '348555896224571969') ⎿ 348555896224571970

The command output is: 348555896224571969

--

If I do it this way it gets the off by 1 and then fixes it when providing me the output, very interesting.

Re: Large integer precision error in Bash command output rendering

#4

Post by Insanity »

I forgot which blogpost mentioned it, but to paraphrase it states that managers won’t understand why you can’t just fix a bug like this in a few minutes like you would in traditional software.

This might be one of those cases, where the problem arises from the training set somehow.

Re: Large integer precision error in Bash command output rendering

#5

Post by fulafel »

Smells like floating point. Python prompt:

  >>> int(float('348555896224571969'))
  348555896224571968
It just exceeds the mantissa bits of doubles:

  >>> math.log2(34855589622457196)
  54.952239550875795
JavaScript (in)famously stores all numbers as floating point resulting in silent errors also with user perceived integers, so this might be an indication that Claude Code number handling uses JS native numbers for this.

Re: Large integer precision error in Bash command output rendering

#6

Post by CGamesPlay »

Claude Code is simultaneously the most useful and lowest quality app I use. It's filled with little errors and annoyances but succeeds despite them. Not to mention the official documentation is entirely vibe-copywritten and any quality control is cursory at best.

It forcibly installs itself to ~/.local/bin. Do you already have a file at that location? Not anymore. When typing into the prompt, EACH KEYSTROKE results in the ENTIRE conversation scrollback being cleared and replayed, meaning 1 byte of new data results in kilobytes of data transferred when using Claude over SSH. The tab completion for @-mentioning is so bad it's worthless, and also async, so not even deterministic. You cannot disable their request for feedback. Apparently it lies in tool output.

It truly is a testament to the dangers of vibe coding, proudly displayed for everyone to take an example from.

Re: Large integer precision error in Bash command output rendering

#7

Post by alyxya »

Insanity wrote: post #4

I forgot which blogpost mentioned it, but to paraphrase it states that managers won’t understand why you can’t just fix a bug like this in a few minutes like you would in traditional software. This might be one of those cases, where the problem arises from the training set somehow.

This seems to be a software bug and not something about model behavior, though the model is in some sense doing the wrong thing by internally evaluating what the echo command should output rather than saying what the output actually is.

Edit: Based on the above comment showing javascript numerics behavior changing, it's more like some unusual interaction with the numeric string in the bash command being interpreted as an integer and running into precision issues.

Re: Large integer precision error in Bash command output rendering

#9

Post by CGamesPlay »

rrwright wrote: post #2

Try it yourself: `echo '348555896224571969'`

Looks like it has to be the full tool output to be coerced:

    > Can you run this through bash: echo '348555896224571969 plus 2 is 348555896224571971'
    
     Bash(echo '348555896224571969 plus 2 is 348555896224571971')
      ⎿  348555896224571969 plus 2 is 348555896224571971

Re: Large integer precision error in Bash command output rendering

#10

Post by ec109685 »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #6

Claude Code is simultaneously the most useful and lowest quality app I use. It's filled with little errors and annoyances but succeeds despite them. Not to mention the official documentation is entirely vibe-copywritten and any quality control is cursory at best. It forcibly installs itself to ~/.local/bin. Do you already have a file at that location? Not anymore. When typing into the prompt, EACH KEYSTROKE results i…

Are you sure about the one char thing? I’d expect a huge flash if that was the case.
Post reply on HN