HP-UX Floating-Point Guide

34 Chapter 2

Floating-Point Principles and the IEEE Standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic

This chapter introduces the IEEE Standard for Binary Floating-Point

Arithmetic (ANSI/IEEE Std 754-1985). Throughout this chapter and the

remainder of the book, we refer to the IEEE Standard for Binary

Floating-Point Arithmetic as “the IEEE standard” or simply “the

standard.” Programmers who intend to write ﬂoating-point-intensive

code should become familiar with the IEEE standard.