#1,088 – How 32-Bit Floating Point Numbers Are Stored in .NET, part I

Floating point numbers in .NET (on Intel-based PCs) are stored using the IEEE 754 standard, which defines how to store both 32-bit (float) and 64-bit (double) floating points.

Floating point numbers are stored in memory by storing the value as a binary floating point value represented using scientific notation (binary).

For example, to store a decimal value of 7.25:

The exponent is expressed as binary, so it has a value of 2.

We can now store this floating point number in memory by storing three things:

• The sign of the number (positive)
• The mantissa (1.1101)
• The exponent (10)

On Intel-based PCs, 32-bit floating point numbers are stored as follows:

• 1 bit to store the sign (0 for positive numbers, 1 for negative numbers)
• 8 bits to store the exponent
• 23 bits to store the mantissa

More coming in part II