[comp.sys.mac.programmer] representing 0.125 in binary

jsp@key.COM (James Preston) (10/12/90)

In article <1990Sep27.222809.9210@phri.nyu.edu> roy@phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) writes:
>	It just occurred to me, that although you *should* be able to
>represent 0.125 as an exact binary fraction (namely 0b001, where b
>represents the binary point), there is no guarantee at all that if you
>write the constant 0.125 in a program, the compiler will convert that into
>the exact binary floating point constant 0.00100000...

As the author of an as-yet-unreleased calculator tool for the Mac which has,
among its many nifty features, the ability to display the binary (or hex or
even octal) representation of floating point numbers, I can assure you that
entering 0.125 does indeed result in an exact binary value.

--James Preston