What are advantages and disadvantages of Integer programming?

Answer 1

The advantages of integer arithmetic over floating point arithmetic is the absence of rounding errors. Rounding errors are an intrinsic aspect of floating point arithmetic, with the result that two or more floating point values cannot be compared for equality or inequality (or with other relational operators), as the exact same original value may be presented slightly differently by two or more floating point variables. Integer arithmetic does not show this symptom, and allows for simple and reliable comparison of numbers.

However, the disadvantage of integer arithmetic is the limited value range. While scaled arithmetic (also known as fixed point arithmetic) allows for integer-based computation with a finite number of decimals, the total value range of a floating point variable is much larger.

For example, a signed 32-bit integer variable can take values in the range -231..+231-1 (-2147483648..+2147483647), an IEEE 754 single precision floating point variable covers a value range of +/- 3.4028234 * 1038 in the same 32 bits.