Questions tagged [floating-point]
For questions about floating-point, a numerical representation format used in computing to represent and perform arithmetic operations on real numbers.
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Why doesn't anyone build a floating-point type that supports an arbitrary exponent?
I don't see a reason not to implement such floating-point type, like this (Rust-esque pseudocode):
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In C/C++, why does the logarithm of zero have a well-defined imaginary part?
By the C standard and the C++ standard:
$\log(0+0i) = -\infty+0 i$.
$\log(0-0i) = -\infty-0 i$.
$\log(-0+0i) = -\infty+\pi i$.
$\log(-0-0i) = -\infty-\pi i$.
However, if the floating-point complex ...
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Can software-based floating point implementations have any base?
The most common ones are base 2 or base 10 (aka decimal floating point). But can they have any base (like base 3, base 6, base 4 etc.)?
user5984
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What are the consequences of allowing decimal-point-less number literals to be interpreted as floats?
In some languages, a number literal's type can be inferred from nearby expressions. For example, 1u64 + 2 might give a u64 value ...
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Can sine converge to zero at infinity?
In common languages, sine produces an error, NaN, or exception when evaluated at infinity. For example, in Python:
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What goes wrong when division-by-zero is defined as multiplication-by-infinity?
Sometimes, we want to implement floating-point operations on systems which use IEEE 754 representations of values, but don't necessarily support IEEE 754 semantics. For example, we may be using the <...
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Reading Floating Point, perhaps without libc/msvcrt
Given a new language, how best should we convert decimal to binary floating point? And please don't just say "use strtod(3)": The venerable C function supports a baroque variety of weird ...
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How to handle periodic functions of very large floats
(Or really just poor conditioning in general.)
Recently, there has been some interest in correctly-rounded floating-point libraries (RLIBM and CORE-MATH), which I think is great, but there is one ...
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Are x87 long doubles still relevant?
Intel created a series of floating-point coprocessors for the x86 called the x87. In addition to supporting IEEE single and double precision numbers, it also supported an 80-bit extended precision ...
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Pros and cons of throwing an error versus returning a NaN value
So I've seen that many languages return a NaN value when calculating an indeterminate arithmetic expression (e.g. 0/0). Other ...
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What are the pros and cons of fixed-point arithmetics vs floating-point arithmetics?
From Wikipedia:
In computing, fixed-point is a method of representing fractional
(non-integer) numbers by storing a fixed number of digits of their
fractional part. ... More generally, the term may ...
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