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For example, in base-10 the number 1/2 has a terminating expansion (0.5) while the number 1/3 does not (0.333...). In base-2 only rationals with denominators that are powers of 2 (such as 1/2 or 3/16) are terminating. Any rational with a denominator that has a prime factor other than 2 will have an infinite binary expansion.
A floating-point variable can represent a wider range of numbers than a fixed-point variable of the same bit width at the cost of precision. A signed 32-bit integer variable has a maximum value of 2 31 − 1 = 2,147,483,647, whereas an IEEE 754 32-bit base-2 floating-point variable has a maximum value of (2 − 2 −23) × 2 127 ≈ 3.4028235 ...
Unlike binary floating-point, numbers are not necessarily normalized; values with few significant digits have multiple possible representations: 1×10 2 =0.1×10 3 =0.01×10 4, etc. When the significand is zero, the exponent can be any value at all.
In a normal floating-point value, there are no leading zeros in the significand (also commonly called mantissa); rather, leading zeros are removed by adjusting the exponent (for example, the number 0.0123 would be written as 1.23 × 10 −2). Conversely, a denormalized floating-point value has a significand with a leading digit of zero.
Its integer part is the largest exponent shown on the output of a value in scientific notation with one leading digit in the significand before the decimal point (e.g. 1.698·10 38 is near the largest value in binary32, 9.999999·10 96 is the largest value in decimal32).
The Motorola 6888x math coprocessors and the Motorola 68040 and 68060 processors also support a 64-bit significand extended-precision format (similar to the Intel format, although padded to a 96-bit format with 16 unused bits inserted between the exponent and significand fields, and values with exponent zero and bit 63 one are normalized values ...
In base ten, a sixteen-bit integer is certainly adequate as it allows up to 32767. However, this example cheats, in that the value of n is not itself limited to a single digit. This has the consequence that the method will fail for n > 3200 or so. In a more general implementation, n would also use a multi-digit
Because the significand is not normalized, most values with less than 34 significant digits have multiple possible representations; 1 × 10 2 = 0.1 × 10 3 = 0.01 × 10 4, etc. This set of representations for a same value is called a cohort. Zero has 12288 possible representations (24576 if both signed zeros are included, in two different cohorts).