Why node 24 broke exponent arithmetic?

[jcubic]

I have a programming langauge written in JavaScript called LIPS.

In Node 24 automated test broke:

failed: 1.4142135623730951 != 1.414213562373095 in (expt 0.5 -1/2)

Old value was 1.414213562373095 new value is 1.4142135623730951

I traced the code and it just executes 0.5 ** -0.5

Are there any changes in precision for the numbers?

What was the reason behind this breaking change?

Tested in Node v24.7.0 and v25.2.1

I'm not sure which version break the code. The CI/CD still run Node 20.

[avivkeller]

Floating point precision may change in different major versions (due to V8). This is expected behavior, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating-point_arithmetic