Floating-point number in the context of "Signed zero"

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⭐ Core Definition: Floating-point number

In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic on subsets of real numbers formed by a significand (a signed sequence of a fixed number of digits in some base) multiplied by an integer power of that base.Numbers of this form are called floating-point numbers.

For example, the number 2469/200 is a floating-point number in base ten with five digits:However, 7716/625 = 12.3456 is not a floating-point number in base ten with five digits—it needs six digits.The nearest floating-point number with only five digits is 12.346.And 1/3 = 0.3333… is not a floating-point number in base ten with any finite number of digits.In practice, most floating-point systems use base two, though base ten (decimal floating point) is also common.

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👉 Floating-point number in the context of Signed zero

Signed zero is zero with an associated sign. In ordinary arithmetic, the number 0 does not have a sign, so that −0, +0 and 0 are equivalent. However, in computing, some number representations allow for the existence of two zeros, often denoted by −0 (negative zero) and +0 (positive zero), regarded as equal by the numerical comparison operations but with possible different behaviors in particular operations. This occurs in the sign-magnitude and ones' complement signed number representations for integers, and in most floating-point number representations. The number 0 is usually encoded as +0, but can still be represented by +0, −0, or 0.

The IEEE 754 standard for floating-point arithmetic (presently used by most computers and programming languages that support floating-point numbers) requires both +0 and −0. Real arithmetic with signed zeros can be considered a variant of the extended real number line such that 1/−0 = −∞ and 1/+0 = +∞; division is undefined only for ±0/±0 and ±∞/±∞.

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Floating-point number in the context of Literal (computer programming)

In computer science, a literal is a textual representation (notation) of a value as it is written in source code. Almost all programming languages have notations for atomic values such as integers, floating-point numbers, and strings, and usually for Booleans and characters; some also have notations for elements of enumerated types and compound values such as arrays, records, and objects. An anonymous function is a literal for the function type.

In contrast to literals, variables or constants are symbols that can take on one of a class of fixed values, the constant being constrained not to change. Literals are often used to initialize variables; for example, in the following, 1 is an integer literal and the three letter string in "cat" is a string literal:

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Floating-point number in the context of Expression (computer science)

In computer science, an expression is a syntactic notation in a programming language that may be evaluated to determine its value of a specific semantic type. It is a combination of one or more numbers, constants, variables, functions, and operators that the programming language interprets (according to its particular rules of precedence and of association) and computes to produce ("to return", in a stateful environment) another value.In simple settings, the resulting value is usually one of various primitive types, such as string, boolean, or numerical (such as integer, floating-point, or complex).

Expressions are often contrasted with statementssyntactic entities that have no value (an instruction).

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