There is something call fixed point numbers (as opposed to floating point), and it sounds like that's what you need. In this case, I fixed the point (B-scaling) to 0 (unsigned) integer bits (allowing numbers from 0 to +1, not including +1).


foreach (
   0.750
   0.500,
   0.400,
   0.250,
   0.125,
) {
   my $num    = $_;
   my $num_B0 = $num * 4294967296;  # 0..+1 not incl +1.
  #my $num_B1 = $num * 2147483648;  # 0 to just over +1.

   printf("%f = %s B0$/",
      $num,
      unpack('B32', pack('N', $num_B0)),
   );
}

__END__
output
======
0.750000 = 11000000000000000000000000000000 B0
0.500000 = 10000000000000000000000000000000 B0
0.400000 = 01100110011001100110011001100110 B0
0.250000 = 01000000000000000000000000000000 B0
0.125000 = 00100000000000000000000000000000 B0

[download]

.5, .25 and .125 are round numbers cause they're 2^(-1), 2^(-2) and 2^(-3) respectively.

The machine for which I write software doesn't support floating point numbers, so we use fixed point arithmetic (which any integer arithmetic machine can do). It can be a pain at times, since we deal with an extreme number of decimal numbers like valve positions, temperature measurements, etc. (It's the control system of a nuclear power plant.)

Let me know if you want to know how to do math with fixed point numbers.

In reply to Re: Converting decimals to binary by ikegami
in thread Converting decimals to binary by ketema

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