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Added description of BCD.
In a like manner, floating point values come in various sizes, depending upon the [[floating-point]] standard that is used. Typically ''single precision'' represents a 32-bit floating-point value, and ''double'' precision represents a 64-bit value.
In a like manner, floating point values come in various sizes, depending upon the [[floating-point]] standard that is used. Typically ''single precision'' represents a 32-bit floating-point value, and ''double'' precision represents a 64-bit value.
Binary-Coded Decimal (BCD) is also used to represent numbers, for instance in [[COBOL]]. BCD encodes a digit using 4 bits, thus allowing 2 digits per byte. Plus and minus signs, and decimal points are also represented by one of the 16 possible 4-bit values. Certain bit combinations are invalid as BCD. Because of the encoding method, BCD is less space-efficient than typical integer or floating point values. For instance, a 32-bit integer can represent a value from negative 2 billion to positive 2 billion, whereas a 32-bit BCD has a maximum value of 99,999,999 or -9,999,999. Arithmetic operations with it are also slower than other encodings. However, it can more accurately represent fractional values, and conversion to human-readable numbers is less CPU-intensive.
==Strings==
==Strings==