Encoding

Double-Precision Floating Point

Just as the most and least significant bytes of an integer are 0 and 3, the most and least significant bits of a double-precision floating- point number are 0 and 63. The beginning bit (and most significant bit) offsets of S, E, and F are 0, 1, and 12, respectively.

These offsets refer to the logical positions of the bits, not to their physical locations (which vary from medium to medium).

The IEEE specifications should be consulted about the encoding for signed zero, signed infinity (overflow), and de-normalized numbers (underflow) [1]. According to IEEE specifications, the NaN (not a number) is system dependent and should not be used externally.