Floating-Point Numbers

The following four data types, DOUBLE, FLOAT, BINARY_DOUBLE, and BINARY_FLOAT are floating-point numbers.

DOUBLE and FLOAT are the floating-point formats used natively on the platform in use. They are the same data types used by default for the DOUBLE and FLOAT data types in a C program on that platform. BINARY_FLOAT and BINARY_DOUBLE are floating-point numbers that conform substantially with the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic, IEEE Standard 754-1985. Because most platforms use the IEEE standard as their native floating-point format, FLOAT and BINARY_FLOAT are the same on those platforms and DOUBLE and BINARY_DOUBLE are also the same.