The IEEE
w.
d informat
is useful in operating environments where IEEE is the floating-point
representation that is used. In addition, you can use the IEEE
w.
d informat
to read files that are created by programs on operating environments
that use the IEEE floating-point representation.
Typically, programs
generate IEEE values in single precision (4 bytes) or double precision
(8 bytes). Truncation is performed by programs solely to save space
on output files. Machine instructions require that the floating-point
number be of one of the two lengths. The IEEE
w.
d informat allows other lengths,
which enables you to read data from files that contain space-saving
truncated data.