IEEE 754 formats
│
English (en) │
single
, double
and extended
are FPC's data types implementing Pascal’s real
.
All of them are implemented according IEEE standard 754, where single
is “single-precision”, double
is “double-precision”, and extended
has 80 bits.
single
value range | 1.5E-45 .. 3.4E38 |
accuracy | 6-9 significant decimal digits precision |
memory requirement | 4 bytes or 32 bits |
property | The single- data-type data field can hold floating-point values and signed and unsigned integer values.
Assigning other values will result in error messages from the compiler when the program is compiled, and the compile will be aborted. That is, the executable program is not created. |
Definition of a data field of data type Single:
var
s: single;
Examples of assigning valid values:
s := -123.45678;
// Note: '0' is an integer literal. 0.0 is an real literal.
// Here, FPC will make an implicit typecast from integer to single:
s := 0;
// a positive sign is optional
s := 123.45678;
Examples of assigning invalid values:
s := '-123.45678';
s := '0';
s := '123.45678';
The difference between the two examples is that the upper example is the assignment of Integer and FloatingCommand literals, while the assignment of the lower example is literals of the String type.
Binary floating-point format
Any value stored as a single requires 32 bits, formatted as shown in the table below:
Bits | Usage |
---|---|
31 | Sign (0 = positive, 1 = negative) |
30 to 23 | Exponent, biased by 127 |
22 to 0 | Fraction f of the number 1.f |
double
Any value stored as a double requires 64 bits, formatted as shown in the table below:
Bits | Usage |
---|---|
63 | Sign (0 = positive, 1 = negative) |
62 to 52 | Exponent, biased by 1023 |
51 to 0 | Fraction f of the number 1.f |
Example of converting from raw data to double (Data is array [0..7] of byte
):
function ToDouble(const Data; IntelEndianness: Boolean = False):Double;inline;
var
ADouble: Double absolute Data;
AQWord: QWord absolute Result;
begin
Result := ADouble;
if not IntelEndianness then
AQWord := SwapEndian(AQWord);
end;
extended
extended
is a 80-bit wide floating-point data type.
There are FPUs that internally use 80 bits for increased precision.
FPC allows to use this gain in precision.
Note: If some platform does not support the extended
data type, it will be mapped to largest available floating-point number data available, i. e. usually double
.
simple data types |
|
---|---|
complex data types |