Structure of Floating Point numbers

[ScreaminVegan]

I use MSVC++ 6.0.

I have been trying to figure out the order of floating point numbers, both of type float and type double, but I can't make any sense of it.

I made a simple little program to examine values bit-by-bit.
I was looking for some sort of mantissa and exponent. I tried to see if they were of a base-2 exponent or base-10, but it didn't seem to be either.

Any help as to the bit-by-bit structure of either would be greatly appreciated.

 

[KeavDog]

Microsoft uses IEEE floating formats. See

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q36068

 

[cra]

This is another good explanation of IEEE format:

http://www.psc.edu/general/software/packages/ieee/ieee.html

 

[ScreaminVegan]

Thanks, guys.