(Free42) tips & tricks: local flags

[Albert Chan]

(07-24-2020 10:19 AM)Paul Dale Wrote:  A 64 bit binary float can safely hold 62 flags:

• the mantissa holds 52 (the 53^rd bit doesn't exist since it's always 1);
• the sign bit holds 1 and
• the exponent holds 9 (despite being 11 bits long, it shouldn't be all 0 or all 1 to avoid NaNs, infinities and subnormals).
  

Avoiding Inf/NaN and subnormal/zero, exponent range = 2^11 - 2, thus able to hold 10 flags.

But, if we use binary float to hold flags, there is no reason to avoid them.