Floating-Point and Double

Floating point numbers, also called floats, represent decimal numbers. We can declare a variable of type float using the float keyword:

main


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float myVariable = 3.14f;

The letter 'f' in the value 3.14f tells the compiler that the value is of type float. Values of the float datatype should always be represented in this format.

The float data type has a limited precision so it can only store 6 to 9 digits after the decimal. There is another datatype called double which offers a higher precision:

main


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float myVar1 = 3.1415926535897f;
double myVar2 = 3.1415926535897;

Console.WriteLine(myVar1); // Output: 3.1415927
Console.WriteLine(myVar2); // Output: 3.1415926535897

As float has a lower precision, the value 3.1415926535897 is automatically rounded off till its 7th decimal digit and the result is stored in the variable myVar1.

	precision
float	6-9 digits
double	15-17 digits

Like int and long, we can also perform arithmetic operations on float and double values.

main


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float var1 = 1.14f;
double var2 = 1.00;
float var3 = 1.0f;

double var4 = var1 + var2 + var3;

Everything was clear?

Section 2. Chapter 3