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significand

The significant digits of a floating-point number, the 1.something that the power of two scales.

The significand is the p-bit number m in (-1)^s * m * 2^e; for a normal IEEE number m = 1.f with 1 <= m < 2, so p = 24 for binary32 and 53 for binary64.

Examples

  • 6.5 = 1.625 × 2²: the significand is 1.625, 1.101 in binary.

See also

floating-point number binary64 binary32 fraction field
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