The RB
w.
d informat
reads numeric data that are stored in microcomputer real binary (floating-point)
notation. Numeric data for scientific calculations are often stored
in floating-point notation. (SAS stores all numeric values in floating-point
notation.) A floating-point value consists of two parts: a mantissa
that gives the value and an exponent that gives the value's magnitude.
It is usually impossible to key in floating-point binary data directly
from a terminal, but many programs write floating-point binary data.