Question

I heard of float (4byte), double (8byte), decimal (16byte). I’m pretty sure i heard someone say there is a 10byte real and i heard there are native types such as complex and imaginary in other languages but i dont know what their sizes are.

Are there a floating point types with the same sizes but behave differently? If so what is the differences?

Answer 1

I think I understand your question…

According to IEEE 754-2008, there are two types of floating 32, 64 and 128 bit representations:

To apapt from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_754-2008

Name        Common name         Base  Digits E min  E max   Digits  E max
binary32    Single precision    2     23+1   −126   +127    7.22    38.23
binary64    Double precision    2     52+1   −1022  +1023   15.95   307.95
binary128   Quadruple precision 2     112+1  -16382 +16383  34.02   4931.77
decimal32                       10    7      −95    +96     7       96
decimal64                       10    16     −383   +384    16      384
decimal128                      10    34     −6143  +6144   34      6144

Here we have two types for each of 32, 64, 128 with different representations respectively, with Decimal32 having a narrower range but greater precision.