RM 3 5 7 17 Float Types (GNAT Reference Manual) (original) (raw)

6.10 RM 3.5.7(17): Float Types ¶

“An implementation should support Long_Float in addition toFloat if the target machine supports 11 or more digits of precision. No other named floating point subtypes are recommended for package Standard. Instead, appropriate named floating point subtypes should be provided in the library package Interfaces (see B.2).”

Short_Float and Long_Long_Float are also provided. The former provides improved compatibility with other implementations supporting this type. The latter corresponds to the highest precision floating-point type supported by the hardware. On most machines, this will be the same as Long_Float, but on some machines, it will correspond to the IEEE extended form. The notable case is all x86 implementations, where Long_Long_Float corresponds to the 80-bit extended precision format supported in hardware on this processor. Note that the 128-bit format on SPARC is not supported, since this is a software rather than a hardware format.