[PD-dev] common date format for Pd

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Thu, 15 Jun 2006, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:

> 999,999 is the largest number that can be represented in Pd without 
> scientific notation.  999,999 in binary is:
> 1111 0100 0010 0011 1111
> But Pd cannot represent this number exactly:
> 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111  (1,048,575)
> but it can represent this number exactly:
> 0111 1111 1111 1111 1111  (524,287)
> Therefore Pd can represent 19-bits of integer accurately.

That's about right. (But then, the most significant bit is usually 
considered implicit because it's always worth 1: so that would be 18 bits 
instead)

But that's for text formats. As long as the data isn't converted to ascii 
decimals, there's still 23 bits (plus 1 implicit bit).

(Pd can be tweaked to display all bits during bin->dec conversion, but i'm 
not sure that it's worth it...)

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| Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801 - http://artengine.ca/matju
| Freelance Digital Arts Engineer, Montréal QC Canada