xref: /illumos-gate/usr/src/man/man3head/float.h.3head (revision eb9a1df2aeb866bf1de4494433b6d7e5fa07b3ae)

Sun Microsystems, Inc. gratefully acknowledges The Open Group for
permission to reproduce portions of its copyrighted documentation.
Original documentation from The Open Group can be obtained online at
http://www.opengroup.org/bookstore/.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and The Open
Group, have given us permission to reprint portions of their
documentation.

In the following statement, the phrase ``this text'' refers to portions
of the system documentation.

Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
in the SunOS Reference Manual, from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2004 Edition,
Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System
Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6,
Copyright (C) 2001-2004 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy
between these versions and the original IEEE and The Open Group
Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee
document. The original Standard can be obtained online at
http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html.

This notice shall appear on any product containing this material.

The contents of this file are subject to the terms of the
Common Development and Distribution License (the "License").
You may not use this file except in compliance with the License.

You can obtain a copy of the license at usr/src/OPENSOLARIS.LICENSE
or http://www.opensolaris.org/os/licensing.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions
and limitations under the License.

When distributing Covered Code, include this CDDL HEADER in each
file and include the License file at usr/src/OPENSOLARIS.LICENSE.
If applicable, add the following below this CDDL HEADER, with the
fields enclosed by brackets "[]" replaced with your own identifying
information: Portions Copyright [yyyy] [name of copyright owner]


Copyright (c) 2001, The IEEE and The Open Group. All Rights Reserved.
Portions Copyright (c) 2003, Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

FLOAT.H 3HEAD "Dec 17, 2003"
NAME
float.h, float - floating types
SYNOPSIS

#include <float.h>
DESCRIPTION

The characteristics of floating types are defined in terms of a model that describes a representation of floating-point numbers and values that provide information about an implementation's floating-point arithmetic.

The following parameters are used to define the model for each floating-point type: s

sign (\(+-1)

b

base or radix of exponent representation (an integer >1)

e

exponent (an integer between a minimum e(min) and a maximum e(max))

p

precision (the number of base-b digits in the significand)

f(k)

non-negative integers less than b (the significand digits)

In addition to normalized floating-point numbers (f(1)>0 if x\(!=0), floating types might be able to contain other kinds of floating-point numbers, such as subnormal floating-point numbers (x\(!=0, e=e(min), f(1)=0) and unnormalized floating-point numbers (x\(!=0, e=e(min), f(1)=0), and values that are not floating-point numbers, such as infinities and NaNs. A NaN is an encoding signifying Not-a-Number. A quiet NaN propagates through almost every arithmetic operation without raising a floating-point exception; a signaling NaN generally raises a floating-point exception when occurring as an arithmetic operand.

The accuracy of the library functions in math.h(3HEAD) and complex.h(3HEAD) that return floating-point results is defined on the libm(3LIB) manual page.

All integer values in the <float.h> header, except FLT_ROUNDS, are constant expressions suitable for use in #if preprocessing directives; all floating values are constant expressions. All except DECIMAL_DIG, FLT_EVAL_METHOD, FLT_RADIX, and FLT_ROUNDS have separate names for all three floating-point types. The floating-point model representation is provided for all values except FLT_EVAL_METHOD and FLT_ROUNDS.

The rounding mode for floating-point addition is characterized by the value of FLT_ROUNDS: -1

Indeterminable.

0

Toward zero.

1

To nearest.

2

Toward positive infinity.

3

Toward negative infinity.

The values of operations with floating operands and values subject to the usual arithmetic conversions and of floating constants are evaluated to a format whose range and precision might be greater than required by the type. The use of evaluation formats is characterized by the architecture-dependent value of FLT_EVAL_METHOD: -1

Indeterminable.

0

Evaluate all operations and constants just to the range and precision of the type.

1

Evaluate operations and constants of type float and double to the range and precision of the double type; evaluate long double operations and constants to the range and precision of the long double type.

2

Evaluate all operations and constants to the range and precision of the long double type.

The values given in the following list are defined as constants.

Radix of exponent representation, b.

FLT_RADIX

Number of base-FLT_RADIX digits in the floating-point significand, p.

FLT_MANT_DIG
DBL_MANT_DIG
LDBL_MANT_DIG

Number of decimal digits, n, such that any floating-point number in the widest supported floating type with p(max) radix b digits can be rounded to a floating-point number with n decimal digits and back again without change to the value.

DECIMAL_DIG

Number of decimal digits, q, such that any floating-point number with q decimal digits can be rounded into a floating-point number with p radix b digits and back again without change to the q decimal digits.

FLT_DIG
DBL_DIG
LDBL_DIG

Minimum negative integer such that FLT_RADIX raised to that power minus 1 is a normalized floating-point number, e(min).

FLT_MIN_EXP
DBL_MIN_EXP
LDBL_MIN_EXP

Minimum negative integer such that 10 raised to that power is in the range of normalized floating-point numbers.

FLT_MIN_10_EXP
DBL_MIN_10_EXP
LDBL_MIN_10_EXP

Maximum integer such that FLT_RADIX raised to that power minus 1 is a representable finite floating-point number, e(max).

FLT_MAX_EXP
DBL_MAX_EXP
LDBL_MAX_EXP

Maximum integer such that 10 raised to that power is in the range of representable finite floating-point numbers.

FLT_MAX_10_EXP
DBL_MAX_10_EXP
LDBL_MAX_10_EXP

The values given in the following list are defined as constant expressions with values that are greater than or equal to those shown:

Maximum representable finite floating-point number.

FLT_MAX
DBL_MAX
LDBL_MAX

The values given in the following list are defined as constant expressions with implementation-defined (positive) values that are less than or equal to those shown:

The difference between 1 and the least value greater than 1 that is representable in the given floating-point type, b^1 - p.

FLT_EPSILON
DBL_EPSILON
LDBL_EPSILON

Minimum normalized positive floating-point number, b^e(min)^-1.

FLT_MIN
DBL_MIN
LDBL_MIN
ATTRIBUTES

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

ATTRIBUTE TYPE ATTRIBUTE VALUE
Interface Stability Standard
SEE ALSO

complex.h(3HEAD), math.h(3HEAD), attributes(5), standards(5)