What is the difference between float and double?

Question

I've read about the difference between double precision and single precision. However, in most cases, `float` and `double` seem to be interchangeable, i.e. using one or the other does not seem to affect the results. Is this really the case? When are floats and doubles interchangeable? What are the differences between them?

Answer 1

float and double are like int and long; double can hold a larger floating point number than the float type. A float is 4 bytes, while a double is 8.

So for small projects, yes, they are interchangeable. If you're dealing with money, float will typically do. Dinosaur DNA? You might want to consider double.