Chapter 2 Floating-Point Principles and the IEEE Standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic

This chapter introduces the IEEE Standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic (ANSI/IEEE Std 754-1985). Throughout this chapter and the remainder of the book, we refer to the IEEE Standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic as "the IEEE standard" or simply "the standard." Programmers who intend to write floating-point-intensive code should become familiar with the IEEE standard.