How to deal with r^(bfloat(2/3))/r^(2.0/3)



Yes, that's my fault. I used  "fpprec: 5$" before, and then, just "kill(all);".
If I quit maxima first, and restart, the result is:
(%i1) bfloat(2/3)-2.0/3;
(%o1)                        4.163336342344337b-17

I still want this small value to be vanished, as it will appear in an index. 
When the result have one term like:
r^4.163336342344337b-17
looks not good.

So, how to set in maxima, such as: if INDEX < 1.b-16, set INDEX =0 ?
How to translate it into maxima language?

Sincerely yours,
Yuanchuan Zou

>On Dec 12, 2007 11:27 AM, zycentre <zycentre-sub at yahoo.com.cn> wrote:
>> (%i6) (bfloat(2/3))-(2.0/3);
>> (%o6)                             -.19073b-6
>
>In Maxima, "2.0" is a machine floating-point number, so the result in
>this case may not be exact. You might want to try
>bfloat(2/3)-(2.0b0/3).
>
>However, with default settings, the error should be < 1.0e-16, and I
>cannot reproduce your result with any settings. In fact, on my system
>(Maxima 5.13.0 on GCL 2.6.8), this returns 0.0b0.
>
>Could you please tell us the version of Maxima you are using?  Does
>this happen in a fresh Maxima?  If not, what special settings are you
>using?
>
>            -s