Floating-point arithmetic
Floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents real numbers approximately, using an integer with a fixed precision, called the
significand
, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base.In practice, most floating-point systems use base two, though base ten (decimal floating point) is also common.
— Wikipedia
Example of floating-point number:
12.345 = \underbrace{12345}_\text{significand} \times \underbrace{10}_\text{base}\!\!\!\!\!\!^{\overbrace{-3}^\text{exponent}}Base two floating pointing is used by default and can produce rounding errors.
This code example for example never terminates:
Decimal (base ten) floating-point usable to work with money values. TODO: add note?