prhed score

[biocc]

In fastq file of Illumina 1.3+,quality score = Phred quality +64, which equal solexa quality+64 early, so i should change some code to deal with new solexa data.
but some calculation is puzzling.

Given a character $sq, the following Perl code gives the Phred quality $Q:

$Q = 10 * log(1 + 10 ** (ord($sq) - 64) / 10.0)) / log(10);
So it is easy to conver Solexa->Sanger quality

my @conv_table;
for (-64..64) {
$conv_table[$_+64] = chr(int(33 + 10*log(1+10**($_/10.0))/log(10)+.499));
}
but i do not understand where is 0.499 from. i think it should be
conv_table[$_+64] = chr(int(33 + 10*log(1+10**($_/10.0))/log(10)))

[Bio.X2Y]

It looks like whoever wrote the code just wanted to round the answer to the nearest whole number (since int() on its own always rounds down).

int(3.1) -> 3
int(3.5) -> 3
int(3.9) -> 3

by adding 0.5 (or in this case 0.499) and then int(), you are rounding to the nearest whole number.

int (3.9 + 0.5) -> 4

Not sure why they are using 0.499 instead of 0.5.