<html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII"> <title>Floating-Point Representation Distance (ULP), and Finding Adjacent Floating-Point Values</title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="../../../../../../../doc/src/boostbook.css" type="text/css"> <meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.74.0"> <link rel="home" href="../../index.html" title="Math Toolkit"> <link rel="up" href="../utils.html" title="Floating Point Utilities"> <link rel="prev" href="sign_functions.html" title="Sign Manipulation Functions"> <link rel="next" href="next_float/nextafter.html" title="Finding the Next Representable Value in a Specific Direction (nextafter)"> </head> <body bgcolor="white" text="black" link="#0000FF" vlink="#840084" alink="#0000FF"> <table cellpadding="2" width="100%"><tr> <td valign="top"><img alt="Boost C++ Libraries" width="277" height="86" src="../../../../../../../boost.png"></td> <td align="center"><a href="../../../../../../../index.html">Home</a></td> <td align="center"><a href="../../../../../../../libs/libraries.htm">Libraries</a></td> <td align="center"><a href="http://www.boost.org/users/people.html">People</a></td> <td align="center"><a href="http://www.boost.org/users/faq.html">FAQ</a></td> <td align="center"><a href="../../../../../../../more/index.htm">More</a></td> </tr></table> <hr> <div class="spirit-nav"> <a accesskey="p" href="sign_functions.html"><img src="../../../../../../../doc/src/images/prev.png" alt="Prev"></a><a accesskey="u" href="../utils.html"><img src="../../../../../../../doc/src/images/up.png" alt="Up"></a><a accesskey="h" href="../../index.html"><img src="../../../../../../../doc/src/images/home.png" alt="Home"></a><a accesskey="n" href="next_float/nextafter.html"><img src="../../../../../../../doc/src/images/next.png" alt="Next"></a> </div> <div class="section" lang="en"> <div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"> <a name="math_toolkit.utils.next_float"></a><a class="link" href="next_float.html" title="Floating-Point Representation Distance (ULP), and Finding Adjacent Floating-Point Values"> Floating-Point Representation Distance (ULP), and Finding Adjacent Floating-Point Values</a> </h3></div></div></div> <div class="toc"><dl> <dt><span class="section"><a href="next_float/nextafter.html"> Finding the Next Representable Value in a Specific Direction (nextafter)</a></span></dt> <dt><span class="section"><a href="next_float/float_next.html"> Finding the Next Greater Representable Value (float_next)</a></span></dt> <dt><span class="section"><a href="next_float/float_prior.html"> Finding the Next Smaller Representable Value (float_prior)</a></span></dt> <dt><span class="section"><a href="next_float/float_distance.html"> Calculating the Representation Distance Between Two Floating Point Values (ULP) float_distance</a></span></dt> <dt><span class="section"><a href="next_float/float_advance.html"> Advancing a Floating Point Value by a Specific Representation Distance (ULP) float_advance</a></span></dt> </dl></div> <p> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_in_the_last_place" target="_top">Unit of Least Precision or Unit in the Last Place</a> is the gap between two different, but as close as possible, floating-point numbers. </p> <p> Most decimal values, for example 0.1, cannot be exactly represented as floating-point values, but will be stored as the closest representable floating-point. </p> <p> Functions are provided for finding adjacent greater and lesser floating-point values, and estimating the number of gaps between any two floating-point values. </p> <p> The floating-point type FPT must have has a fixed number of bits in the representation. The number of bits may set at runtime, but must be the same for all numbers. For example, <a href="http://shoup.net/ntl/doc/quad_float.txt" target="_top">NTL::quad_float</a> type (fixed 128-bit representation) or <a href="http://shoup.net/ntl/doc/RR.txt" target="_top">NTL::RR</a> type (arbitrary but fixed decimal digits, default 150) but <span class="bold"><strong>not</strong></span> a type that extends the representation to provide an exact representation for any number, for example <a href="http://keithbriggs.info/xrc.html" target="_top">XRC eXact Real in C</a>. </p> </div> <table xmlns:rev="http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~gregod/boost/tools/doc/revision" width="100%"><tr> <td align="left"></td> <td align="right"><div class="copyright-footer">Copyright © 2006 , 2007, 2008, 2009 John Maddock, Paul A. Bristow, Hubert Holin, Xiaogang Zhang, Bruno Lalande, Johan Råde, Gautam Sewani and Thijs van den Berg<p> Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at <a href="http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt" target="_top">http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt</a>) </p> </div></td> </tr></table> <hr> <div class="spirit-nav"> <a accesskey="p" href="sign_functions.html"><img src="../../../../../../../doc/src/images/prev.png" alt="Prev"></a><a accesskey="u" href="../utils.html"><img src="../../../../../../../doc/src/images/up.png" alt="Up"></a><a accesskey="h" href="../../index.html"><img src="../../../../../../../doc/src/images/home.png" alt="Home"></a><a accesskey="n" href="next_float/nextafter.html"><img src="../../../../../../../doc/src/images/next.png" alt="Next"></a> </div> </body> </html>