Floating-Point Variables
Floating-point numbers are the last category of primitive types that need to be covered. Floating-point numbers are used to represent numbers that have a decimal point in them (such as 5.3 or 99.234). Whole numbers can also be represented, but as a floating point, the number 5 is actually 5.0.
In Java, floating-point numbers are represented by the types float and double. Both of these follow a standard floating-point specification: IEEE Standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic, ANSI/IEEE Std. 754-1985 (IEEE, New York). The fact that these data types follow this specification—no matter what machine an application or applet is running on—is one of the details that makes Java so portable. In other languages, floating-point ...
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