floattype

Floattype is a floating-point numeric data type used in the Floattype programming language and its standard libraries. It defines two common precisions, Floattype32 and Floattype64, corresponding to the IEEE 754 single-precision and double-precision formats. Floattype values are stored as binary floating-point numbers and support the usual arithmetic and comparison operations.

Floattype adheres to IEEE 754 rules for normalization, rounding, and special values. It includes representations for zero, positive and negative infinity, and NaN (not a number). The default rounding mode is round-to-nearest, ties-to-even, with options for explicit rounding in certain operations or through language features. Endianness is determined by the platform, and binary serialization follows the platform’s conventions.

In terms of usage, Floattype supports standard arithmetic operators (+, -, *, /), comparisons, and a set of common mathematical functions. It interoperates with integer and other numeric types through explicit or implicit conversions. Text literals can be parsed into Floattype values from decimal representations, with support for fixed-point and scientific notation. There are typical library routines for parsing, formatting, and rounding.

Edge cases and semantics include NaN propagation, where any arithmetic involving NaN yields NaN, and division by zero, which yields Infinity or NaN depending on the operands. Comparisons with NaN generally yield false, with a separate isNaN predicate available in most contexts. Subnormal numbers and underflow behavior follow IEEE 754 rules, and precision loss can occur in repeated calculations or large-range operations.

Implementation notes emphasize hardware acceleration where available, with performance optimizations such as vectorization in numeric-heavy code. Floattype is commonly used in scientific computing, graphics, and measurement applications where finite precision is acceptable. See also: IEEE 754, floating-point, numeric types.