Two clients giving different getdifficulty values

[martok]

Hi,

I have one client getdifficulty reading 434882 and another (git) at 434877. Gribble thinks 434882 is correct but why the divergent readings?

[max in montreal]

http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php

[max in montreal]

434882.72175

[theymos]

Those difficulty numbers are never used internally by the network: they are only used as an easy way of expressing the current difficulty. How it is derived from the actual "difficulty" (a very large target number) varies by version.

If two sources give you difficulty numbers within 100 or so, they probably refer to the same difficulty.

[Pieter Wuille]

There was a rounding error in the way the old difficulty was calculated, the one calculated by git head is actually more correct.

And indeed, it's only converted to a floating-point number for showing it to the user - internally it's all integers, where nothing was changed.