Hello,
I am currently enrolled in a C++ class, and we have been trying to figure out the way that a double is saved. We know that it's still 32 bits, and that it has the same number of precision as a float, but how is it stored? What makes it different from a float in the way that it is stored?
double has higher precision than a float, that's why it's called a double (double stands for "double precision floating point").
How it's stored is platform dependent, on most 32 bit systems it will be 64 bits but the order of the bits can differ.
Last edited by hk_mp5kpdw; 02-01-2006 at 01:58 PM.
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Good luck. There is no way to find out "the way that a double is saved", because there is no one way this is done. The C++ standard imposes practically no restrictions on the implementation, which means that it may differ from compiler to compiler, os to os, cpu to cpu.I am currently enrolled in a C++ class, and we have been trying to figure out the way that a double is saved.
For what it's worth, for all x86, double is a 64-bit IEEE 754 denormalized floating point number, as described in the wikipedia link.
All the buzzt!
CornedBee
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