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From: jkenton@pinocchio.encore.com (Jeff Kenton)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.misc,comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: CORRECTION to: heaps of numbers (tagged immediate floats)
Message-ID: <11313@encore.Encore.COM>
Date: 6 Mar 90 02:48:40 GMT
References: <1990Mar6.015230.20068@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Sender: news@Encore.COM
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From article <1990Mar6.015230.20068@Neon.Stanford.EDU>, by wilson@carcoar.Stanford.EDU (Paul Wilson):
> 
> And if I've got it wrong somehow, please point it out.  (As I see it, my
> real assumption is this:  the upper 2 or 3 non-sign bits of an IEEE short
> are usually zero.  If I've misunderstood FP representation or
> distributions, and this is not true, let me know.)
> 

Unfortunately for your purposes, the exponent is "biased" by 127.  This means
that the representation of exponents runs from 1 to 255 (smallest to largest).
All floats >= 2.0 have the high bit of the exponent set.  Yet another gotcha.







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      jeff kenton  ---	temporarily at jkenton@pinocchio.encore.com	 
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