1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates to the field of type resolution in programming languages, and in particular to encoding floating point numbers.
2. Description of the Related Art
In interpretive languages like ECMAScript (standardized under the European Computer Manufacturer's Association; see also, ISO standard 16262), numbers are treated the same regardless of the particular attributes of the number. For example, simple integers are treated as double precision floating point numbers. (The double precision floating point standard is described in the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 754-1985 standard, which is hereby incorporated by reference.) However, certain processing environments (e.g., mobile devices, personal digital assistants, etc.) do not include a floating point processor. These processing environments instead can attempt to emulate a floating point number in the software, which can be slow and inefficient when compared to devices including a floating point processor or even the same device operating upon integers. For example, the operation 2+2 in a software emulation of floating point numbers can be orders of magnitude slower than performing the same operation using integer-typed variables.
The same reference numerals are used in different figures to refer to similar elements.