Mata Matters: Overflow, underflow and the IEEE floating-point format

Jean Marie Linhart ()
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Jean Marie Linhart: StataCorp

Stata Journal, 2008, vol. 8, issue 2, 255-268

Abstract: Mata is Stata’s matrix language. The Mata Matters column shows how Mata can be used interactively to solve problems and as a programming language to add new features to Stata. In this quarter’s column, we investigate underflow and overflow and then delve into the details of how floating-point numbers are stored in the IEEE 754 floating-point standard. We show how to test for overflow and underflow. We demonstrate how to use the %21x format to see underflow and the %16H, %16L, %8H, and %8L formats for displaying the byte content of doubles and floats.

Keywords: Mata; underflow; overflow; denormalized number; normalized num- ber; subnormal number; double precision; missing values; IEEE 754; format; binary; hexadecimal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
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