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A repeating decimal or recurring decimal is a decimal representation of a number whose digits are eventually periodic (that is, after some place, the same sequence of digits is repeated forever); if this sequence consists only of zeros (that is if there is only a finite number of nonzero digits), the decimal is said to be terminating, and is not considered as repeating.
Some programming languages (or compilers for them) provide a built-in (primitive) or library decimal data type to represent non-repeating decimal fractions like 0.3 and −1.17 without rounding, and to do arithmetic on them. Examples are the decimal.Decimal or num7.Num type of Python, and analogous types provided by other languages.
Also the converse is true: The decimal expansion of a rational number is either finite, or endlessly repeating. Finite decimal representations can also be seen as a special case of infinite repeating decimal representations. For example, 36 ⁄ 25 = 1.44 = 1.4400000...; the endlessly repeated sequence is the one-digit sequence "0".
In the case of irrational numbers, the decimal expansion does not terminate, nor end with a repeating sequence. For example, the decimal representation of π starts with 3.14159, but no finite number of digits can represent π exactly, nor does it repeat. Conversely, a decimal expansion that terminates or repeats must be a rational number.
An irrational number stays aperiodic (with an infinite number of non-repeating digits) in all integral bases. Thus, for example in base 2, π = 3.1415926... 10 can be written as the aperiodic 11.001001000011111... 2. Putting overscores, n, or dots, ṅ, above the common digits is a convention used to represent repeating rational expansions. Thus:
A binary clock might use LEDs to express binary values. In this clock, each column of LEDs shows a binary-coded decimal numeral of the traditional sexagesimal time.. The common names are derived somewhat arbitrarily from a mix of Latin and Greek, in some cases including roots from both languages within a single name. [27]
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This is the repeating decimal notation (to which there does not exist a single universally accepted notation or phrasing). For base 10 it is called a repeating decimal or recurring decimal. An irrational number has an infinite non-repeating representation in all integer bases.