lebegpontos

Lebegpontos is a term used in computing to refer to floating-point representations of real numbers, particularly within Hungarian-language technical literature. It combines lebegő ("floating") and pontos ("point" or "precision"), and is used to describe numbers stored with finite precision but a wide dynamic range. In practice, a lebegpontos value represents a real number approximately, not exactly.

Binary lebegpontos formats store numbers as a sign bit, a significand (mantissa), and an exponent. This structure allows representing a broad spectrum of magnitudes with a fixed total number of bits. The most widely used formats are single-precision (32-bit) and double-precision (64-bit) IEEE 754 representations, though other precisions and decimal variants exist in various languages and libraries.

IEEE 754, first published in 1985 and later revised, defines the encoding rules, special values (NaN, infinities), and rounding behavior for lebegpontos numbers. It specifies rounding modes such as round to nearest, ties to even, and round toward zero, and provides for subnormal numbers to support gradual underflow.

Lebegpontos arithmetic is subject to rounding errors and loss of precision, as well as overflow and underflow near extreme values. These characteristics influence numerical accuracy and stability in computations. Lebegpontos is widely used in scientific computing, computer graphics, and general-purpose programming, though certain financial applications may prefer decimal or fixed-point representations to avoid some rounding pitfalls.

See also: Floating-point arithmetic; IEEE 754.