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Using strictfp guarantees that the results of floating-point calculations are identical on all platforms. It can be used on classes , interfaces , and non-abstract methods . [ 5 ] When applied to a method, it causes all calculations inside the method to use strict floating-point math.
Variable length arithmetic represents numbers as a string of digits of a variable's length limited only by the memory available. Variable-length arithmetic operations are considerably slower than fixed-length format floating-point instructions.
The IEEE standard stores the sign, exponent, and significand in separate fields of a floating point word, each of which has a fixed width (number of bits). The two most commonly used levels of precision for floating-point numbers are single precision and double precision.
Java allows usage of primitive types but only inside properly allocated objects. Sometimes a part of the type safety is implemented indirectly: e.g. the class BigDecimal represents a floating point number of arbitrary precision, but handles only numbers that can be expressed with a finite representation.
Some operations of floating-point arithmetic are invalid, such as taking the square root of a negative number. The act of reaching an invalid result is called a floating-point exception. An exceptional result is represented by a special code called a NaN, for "Not a Number". All NaNs in IEEE 754-1985 have this format: sign = either 0 or 1.
(The term "exception" as used in IEEE 754 is a general term meaning an exceptional condition, which is not necessarily an error, and is a different usage to that typically defined in programming languages such as a C++ or Java, in which an "exception" is an alternative flow of control, closer to what is termed a "trap" in IEEE 754 terminology.)
Although reserved as a keyword in Java, goto is not used and has no function. [2] [26] strictfp (added in J2SE 1.2) [4] Although reserved as a keyword in Java, strictfp is obsolete, and no longer has any function. [27] Previously this keyword was used to restrict the precision and rounding of floating point calculations to ensure portability. [8]
An exception handling mechanism allows the procedure to raise an exception [2] if this precondition is violated, [1] for example if the procedure has been called on an abnormal set of arguments. The exception handling mechanism then handles the exception. [3] The precondition, and the definition of exception, is subjective.