number_properties

number_properties — determine floating-point parameters

Calling sequence

pr = number_properties(prop)  

Parameters

prop : string
pr : real or boolean scalar

Description

This function may be used to get the characteristic numbers/properties of the floating point set denoted here by F(b,p,emin,emax) (usually the 64 bits float numbers set prescribe by IEEE 754). Numbers of F are of the form :



     sign * m * b^e
   
    

e is the exponent and m the mantissa :



     m = d_1 b^(-1) + d_2 b^(-2) + .... + d_p b^(-p)
   
    

d_i the digits are in [0, b-1] and e in [emin, emax], the number is said "normalised" if d_1 ~= 0. The following may be gotten :

prop = "radix"-> pr is the radix b of the set F
prop = "digits"-> pr is the number of digits p
prop = "huge"-> pr is the max positive float of F
prop = "tiny"-> pr is the min positive normalised float of F
prop = "denorm"-> pr is a boolean : %t if denormalised numbers are used
prop = "tiniest"-> if denorm = %t, pr is the min positive denormalised number else pr = tiny
prop = "eps"-> pr is the epsilon machine ( generally (b^(1-p))/2 ) which is the relative max error between a real x (such than |x| in [tiny, huge]) and fl(x), its floating point approximation in F.
prop = "minexp"-> pr is emin
prop = "maxexp"-> pr is emax

Remarks

This function uses the lapack routine dlamch to get the machine parameters (the names (radix, digit, huge, etc...) are those recommended by the LIA 1 standard and are different from the corresponding lapack's ones) ; CAUTION : sometimes you can see the following definition for the epsilon machine : eps = b^(1-p) but in this function we use the traditionnal one (see prop = "eps" before) and so eps = (b^(1-p))/2 if normal rounding occurs and eps = b^(1-p) if not.

Examples



b = number_properties("radix")
eps = number_properties("eps")
   
  

See also

nearfloat, frexp

Author

Bruno Pincon