In addition, this class provides several methods for converting a float to a String and a String to a float, as well as other constants and methods useful when dealing with a float.

 
new Float(f1).compareTo(new Float(f2)) 

Bit 31 (the bit that is selected by the mask 0x80000000) represents the sign of the floating-point number. Bits 30-23 (the bits that are selected by the mask 0x7f800000) represent the exponent. Bits 22-0 (the bits that are selected by the mask 0x007fffff) represent the significand (sometimes called the mantissa) of the floating-point number.

If the argument is positive infinity, the result is 0x7f800000.

If the argument is negative infinity, the result is 0xff800000.

If the argument is NaN, the result is 0x7fc00000.

In all cases, the result is an integer that, when given to the intBitsToFloat(int) method, will produce a floating-point value the same as the argument to floatToIntBits (except all NaN values are collapsed to a single "canonical" NaN value).


floatToRawIntBits
public static native int floatToRawIntBits( float value )

Returns a representation of the specified floating-point value according to the IEEE 754 floating-point "single format" bit layout, preserving Not-a-Number (NaN) values.

Bit 31 (the bit that is selected by the mask 0x80000000) represents the sign of the floating-point number. Bits 30-23 (the bits that are selected by the mask 0x7f800000) represent the exponent. Bits 22-0 (the bits that are selected by the mask 0x007fffff) represent the significand (sometimes called the mantissa) of the floating-point number.

If the argument is positive infinity, the result is 0x7f800000.

If the argument is negative infinity, the result is 0xff800000.

If the argument is NaN, the result is the integer representing the actual NaN value. Unlike the floatToIntBits method, intToRawIntBits does not collapse all the bit patterns encoding a NaN to a single "canonical" NaN value.

In all cases, the result is an integer that, when given to the intBitsToFloat(int) method, will produce a floating-point value the same as the argument to floatToRawIntBits.


intBitsToFloat
public static native float intBitsToFloat( int bits )

Returns the float value corresponding to a given bit represention. The argument is considered to be a representation of a floating-point value according to the IEEE 754 floating-point "single format" bit layout.

If the argument is 0x7f800000, the result is positive infinity.

If the argument is 0xff800000, the result is negative infinity.

If the argument is any value in the range 0x7f800001 through 0x7fffffff or in the range 0xff800001 through 0xffffffff, the result is a NaN. No IEEE 754 floating-point operation provided by Java can distinguish between two NaN values of the same type with different bit patterns. Distinct values of NaN are only distinguishable by use of the Float.floatToRawIntBits method.

In all other cases, let s, e, and m be three values that can be computed from the argument:

 
int s = ((bits >> 31) == 0) ? 1 : -1; 
int e = ((bits >> 23) & 0xff); 
int m = (e == 0) ? 
(bits & 0x7fffff) << 1 : 
(bits & 0x7fffff) | 0x800000; 

Note that this method may not be able to return a float NaN with exactly same bit pattern as the int argument. IEEE 754 distinguishes between two kinds of NaNs, quiet NaNs and signaling NaNs. The differences between the two kinds of NaN are generally not visible in Java. Arithmetic operations on signaling NaNs turn them into quiet NaNs with a different, but often similar, bit pattern. However, on some processors merely copying a signaling NaN also performs that conversion. In particular, copying a signaling NaN to return it to the calling method may perform this conversion. So intBitsToFloat may not be able to return a float with a signaling NaN bit pattern. Consequently, for some int values, floatToRawIntBits(intBitsToFloat(start)) may not equal start. Moreover, which particular bit patterns represent signaling NaNs is platform dependent; although all NaN bit patterns, quiet or signaling, must be in the NaN range identified above.


isInfinite
public static boolean isInfinite( float v )

Returns true if the specified number is infinitely large in magnitude, false otherwise.


isNaN
public static boolean isNaN( float v )

Returns true if the specified number is a Not-a-Number (NaN) value, false otherwise.


parseFloat
public static float parseFloat( String s ) throws NumberFormatException

Returns a new float initialized to the value represented by the specified String, as performed by the valueOf method of class Float.


toString
public static String toString( float f )

Returns a string representation of the float argument. All characters mentioned below are ASCII characters.

• If the argument is NaN, the result is the string "NaN".
• Otherwise, the result is a string that represents the sign and magnitude (absolute value) of the argument. If the sign is negative, the first character of the result is '-' ('\u002D'); if the sign is positive, no sign character appears in the result. As for the magnitude m:
  • If m is infinity, it is represented by the characters "Infinity"; thus, positive infinity produces the result "Infinity" and negative infinity produces the result "-Infinity".
  • If m is zero, it is represented by the characters "0.0"; thus, negative zero produces the result "-0.0" and positive zero produces the result "0.0".
  • If m is greater than or equal to 10^-3 but less than 10⁷, then it is represented as the integer part of m, in decimal form with no leading zeroes, followed by '.' ('\u002E'), followed by one or more decimal digits representing the fractional part of m.
  • If m is less than 10^-3 or greater than or equal to 10⁷, then it is represented in so-called "computerized scientific notation." Let n be the unique integer such that 10ⁿ <= m < 10ⁿ⁺¹; then let a be the mathematically exact quotient of m and 10ⁿ so that 1 <= a < 10. The magnitude is then represented as the integer part of a, as a single decimal digit, followed by '.' ('\u002E'), followed by decimal digits representing the fractional part of a, followed by the letter 'E' ('\u0045'), followed by a representation of n as a decimal integer, as produced by the method toString(int).

To create localized string representations of a floating-point value, use subclasses of java.text.NumberFormat.


valueOf
public static Float valueOf( String s ) throws NumberFormatException

Returns a Float object holding the float value represented by the argument string s.

If s is null, then a NullPointerException is thrown.

Leading and trailing whitespace characters in s are ignored. The rest of s should constitute a FloatValue as described by the lexical syntax rules:

FloatValue:

Sign_opt NaN

Sign_opt Infinity

Sign_opt FloatingPointLiteral

To interpret localized string representations of a floating-point value, use subclasses of java.text.NumberFormat.

Note that trailing format specifiers, specifiers that determine the type of a floating-point literal (1.0f is a float value; 1.0d is a double value), do not influence the results of this method. In other words, the numerical value of the input string is converted directly to the target floating-point type. In general, the two-step sequence of conversions, string to double followed by double to float, is not equivalent to converting a string directly to float. For example, if first converted to an intermediate double and then to float, the string
"1.00000017881393421514957253748434595763683319091796875001d"
results in the float value 1.0000002f; if the string is converted directly to float, 1.0000001f results.

• Float.NaN is considered by this method to be equal to itself and greater than all other float values (including Float.POSITIVE_INFINITY).
• 0.0f is considered by this method to be greater than -0.0f.

Note that in most cases, for two instances of class Float, f1 and f2, the value of f1.equals(f2) is true if and only if

 
f1.floatValue() == f2.floatValue() 

also has the value true. However, there are two exceptions:

• If f1 and f2 both represent Float.NaN, then the equals method returns true, even though Float.NaN==Float.NaN has the value false.
• If f1 represents +0.0f while f2 represents -0.0f, or vice versa, the equal test has the value false, even though 0.0f==-0.0f has the value true.