Mike Schreck <schreck@HORIZSYS.COM> wrote:

>.... eventually the result will underflow and your result
>will be POSITIVE ZERO (+0). This is literally how the number is represented
>internally. The same thing can happen from the negative side of zero
>resulting in NEGATIVE ZERO (-0)
> ....
>Trouble is they all have different representations.
>Un-Normals have an exponent of 0x0001 (+Un-normal) and 0x8001 (-Un-normal)
>De-Normals have an exponent of 0x0000 (+De-normal) and 0x8000 (-De-normal)
>
>needless to say zero is a paticularly nasty number in floating point

    Which is why the representation used by Microchip's floating-point
    appnotes is specifically tailored to produce A UNIQUE REPRESENTATION of
    zero.  The guy who posted the original message in this thread should
    read the appnote documentation carefully.

    -Andy

--
Andrew Warren - fastfwd@ix.netcom.com
Fast Forward Engineering, Vista, California