The short answer: the exponent in the text representations of floats (and doubles) is base 10.
The long answer: m � 2^e explicitly refers to the value space of floats (that is, the range of values that can be represented), not the lexical (text) representation that shows up in a document. The power of 2 representation is presumably used because it's the only way to be completely accurate, because CPUs represent numbers as a series of binary digits. Oddly, I can't find any explicit indication that the exponent of the lexical representation represents a power of 10, though the example you cite clearly assumes that. -----Original Message----- From: Bagepalli, Kiran [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 2:16 PM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: Datatype question Is the exponent in a float or double type, base 2 or it is base 10. 2^X or 10^X. The schema spec says "100" and "1.0E2" are the same . At the same time it also says the float consists of the values m � 2^e Can someone clarify which definition is correct. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
