floating point - Why does this simple division between 2 floats not work with java?

Question

System.out.println((26.55f/3f));

or

System.out.println((float)( (float)26.55 / (float)3.0 ));

etc.

returns the result 8.849999. not 8.85 as it should.

Can anyone explain this or should we all avoid using floats?

Answer 1

What Every Programmer Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic:

Q: Why don’t my numbers, like 0.1 + 0.2 add up to a nice round 0.3, and instead I get a weird result like 0.30000000000000004?

A: Because internally, computers use a format (binary floating-point) that cannot accurately represent a number like 0.1, 0.2 or 0.3 at all.

In-depth explanations at the linked-to site