Abstract
Decimal floating-point is an emerging standard which uses base 10 instead of base 2 to represent floating-point numbers. In this chapter we will take a look at how decimal floating-point numbers are stored using the IEEE 754-2008 standard as our reference. We will then look at a C language software implementation of decimal floating-point which conforms to the IEEE standard and give some examples of its use. We follow this with a look at the Python decimal library. We end with some thoughts on decimal floating-point and its use.
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References
IEEE Standards Association. Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic. IEEE 754-2008 (2008).
Duale, A., et al. Decimal floating-point in z9: An implementation and testing perspective. IBM Journal of Research and Development 51.1.2 (2007): 217–227.
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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
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Kneusel, R.T. (2015). Decimal Floating Point. In: Numbers and Computers. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17260-6_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17260-6_6
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-17259-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-17260-6
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