Floating Point Data And Their Types

Floating Point Data

      The numeric values that have decimal point in them are called floating point data. The floating point data is also called real type data. For example, 0.1, 0.002, 3.1013, 4.0, -3.5, -7.8 are real type values.

Data Types for Floating Point Values

      The data types used in C for storing floating point values are as follows:
(i)     float     (ii)     double     (iii)     long double

i) The float Data Type

      The 'float' data type is used to store real values. This data type takes 4 bytes in memory. The 'float' data type has a precision of 6. If the precision is greater than 6 then only the first 6 digits of the precision will be stored.

ii) The double Data Type

      The 'double' data type is used to store large real values. It takes 8 bytes in memory. The 'double' data type has a precision of 15 digits.

iii) The long double Data Type

      The 'long double' data type is used to store very large real values. It takes 10 bytes in memory. The 'long double' data type has a precision of 19 digits.