On: Concise Encoding: A secure data format for a moder...

[profquail]

The complicated number encoding scheme you mentioned is a hexfloat: C has them too.

Hexfloat can be really useful when you need precise/exact floating-point constants for numerical methods. Without them, you end up having to do more-complicated hacks to preserve exact constant values when code gets compiled, or you have to live with compilers (sometimes) subtly altering constants.

I wish more languages supported hexfloats.

[unwind → profquail]

Just to clarify a bit what "C has them" means; the standard library string-to-float parsing function strtof() [1] support this format.

You can also use them as floating-point literals in your code.

[1]: https://linux.die.net/man/3/strtof

[formerly_proven → profquail]

Hexfloat is also vastly easier to parse from/to IEEE 752 format than decimal floats.

[BoppreH → profquail]

Thanks, I had never seen that before. But Concise Encoding did complicate them further by accepting commas as decimal separator.