Floating Point Types

• float is the basic floating point type.
• There is also double and long double
• To make sure a constant is a float
  • add a decimal point (8.0)
  • These are by default a double.
  • Add a f at the end indicates a float (8.0f)
  • or a l is a long double (8.0l);
• Floats can be written in scientific notation
  • 3E4 is $3.0 x 10^4$
  • 8.4E-5 is valid as well.
  • 9.34E+7 is good.
• Not all floating point numbers can be accurately represented.
  • 1/10 for example.
  • This is called roundoff error.
• Be careful, we can't represent all of the rational numbers between 1 and 2.
• Try 0.1