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(Floats): Mention that when non-decimal floats are entered, only

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approximations are stored.
This commit is contained in:
Jay Belanger 2007-04-16 02:56:26 +00:00
parent bd149d6ec3
commit 6fd06144b6
1 changed files with 13 additions and 10 deletions
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23
man/calc.texi
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@ -10632,16 +10632,19 @@ Calculator's arithmetic is not intended to be IEEE-conformant in any
way.
While floats are always @emph{stored} in decimal, they can be entered
and displayed in any radix just like integers and fractions. The
notation @samp{@var{radix}#@var{ddd}.@var{ddd}} is a floating-point
number whose digits are in the specified radix. Note that the @samp{.}
is more aptly referred to as a ``radix point'' than as a decimal
point in this case. The number @samp{8#123.4567} is defined as
@samp{8#1234567 * 8^-4}. If the radix is 14 or less, you can use
@samp{e} notation to write a non-decimal number in scientific notation.
The exponent is written in decimal, and is considered to be a power
of the radix: @samp{8#1234567e-4}. If the radix is 15 or above, the
letter @samp{e} is a digit, so scientific notation must be written
and displayed in any radix just like integers and fractions. Since a
float that is entered in a radix other that 10 will be converted to
decimal, the number that Calc stores may not be exactly the number that
was entered, it will be the closest decimal approximation given the
current precison. The notation @samp{@var{radix}#@var{ddd}.@var{ddd}}
is a floating-point number whose digits are in the specified radix.
Note that the @samp{.} is more aptly referred to as a ``radix point''
than as a decimal point in this case. The number @samp{8#123.4567} is
defined as @samp{8#1234567 * 8^-4}. If the radix is 14 or less, you can
use @samp{e} notation to write a non-decimal number in scientific
notation. The exponent is written in decimal, and is considered to be a
power of the radix: @samp{8#1234567e-4}. If the radix is 15 or above,
the letter @samp{e} is a digit, so scientific notation must be written
out, e.g., @samp{16#123.4567*16^2}. The first two exercises of the
Modes Tutorial explore some of the properties of non-decimal floats.