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40.1 Representation of floating point numbers

The IEEE Standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic defines binary formats for single and double precision numbers. Each number is composed of three parts: a sign bit (s), an exponent (E) and a fraction (f). The numerical value of the combination (s,E,f) is given by the following formula,

(-1)^s (1.fffff...) 2^E

The sign bit is either zero or one. The exponent ranges from a minimum value E_min to a maximum value E_max depending on the precision. The exponent is converted to an unsigned number e, known as the biased exponent, for storage by adding a bias parameter, e = E + bias. The sequence fffff... represents the digits of the binary fraction f. The binary digits are stored in normalized form, by adjusting the exponent to give a leading digit of 1. Since the leading digit is always 1 for normalized numbers it is assumed implicitly and does not have to be stored. Numbers smaller than 2^(E_min) are be stored in denormalized form with a leading zero,

(-1)^s (0.fffff...) 2^(E_min)

This allows gradual underflow down to 2^(E_min - p) for p bits of precision. A zero is encoded with the special exponent of 2^(E_min - 1) and infinities with the exponent of 2^(E_max + 1).

The format for single precision numbers uses 32 bits divided in the following way,

seeeeeeeefffffffffffffffffffffff
    
s = sign bit, 1 bit
e = exponent, 8 bits  (E_min=-126, E_max=127, bias=127)
f = fraction, 23 bits

The format for double precision numbers uses 64 bits divided in the following way,

seeeeeeeeeeeffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

s = sign bit, 1 bit
e = exponent, 11 bits  (E_min=-1022, E_max=1023, bias=1023)
f = fraction, 52 bits

It is often useful to be able to investigate the behavior of a calculation at the bit-level and the library provides functions for printing the IEEE representations in a human-readable form.

Function: void gsl_ieee_fprintf_float (FILE * stream, const float * x)

Function: void gsl_ieee_fprintf_double (FILE * stream, const double * x)

These functions output a formatted version of the IEEE floating-point number pointed to by x to the stream stream. A pointer is used to pass the number indirectly, to avoid any undesired promotion from float to double. The output takes one of the following forms,

NaN

the Not-a-Number symbol

Inf, -Inf

positive or negative infinity

1.fffff...*2^E, -1.fffff...*2^E

a normalized floating point number

0.fffff...*2^E, -0.fffff...*2^E

a denormalized floating point number

0, -0

positive or negative zero

The output can be used directly in GNU Emacs Calc mode by preceding it with 2# to indicate binary.

Function: void gsl_ieee_printf_float (const float * x)

Function: void gsl_ieee_printf_double (const double * x)

These functions output a formatted version of the IEEE floating-point number pointed to by x to the stream stdout.

The following program demonstrates the use of the functions by printing the single and double precision representations of the fraction 1/3. For comparison the representation of the value promoted from single to double precision is also printed.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <gsl/gsl_ieee_utils.h>

int
main (void) 
{
  float f = 1.0/3.0;
  double d = 1.0/3.0;

  double fd = f; /* promote from float to double */
  
  printf (" f="); gsl_ieee_printf_float(&f); 
  printf ("\n");

  printf ("fd="); gsl_ieee_printf_double(&fd); 
  printf ("\n");

  printf (" d="); gsl_ieee_printf_double(&d); 
  printf ("\n");

  return 0;
}

The binary representation of 1/3 is 0.01010101... . The output below shows that the IEEE format normalizes this fraction to give a leading digit of 1,

 f= 1.01010101010101010101011*2^-2
fd= 1.0101010101010101010101100000000000000000000000000000*2^-2
 d= 1.0101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101*2^-2

The output also shows that a single-precision number is promoted to double-precision by adding zeros in the binary representation.