<type> in, out ... call XXtoYY(in, out)
or
<type> in, out, XXtoYY ... out = XXtoYY(in)
hexone = stohx(1.0)
Fortran 77 supports two floating point representations, binary (base 2) and hex (base 16). Both representations use the same number of bits to represent the exponent and mantissa. Hex floating point has a larger dynamic range, but is less accurate and has some nasty (and surprising) numerical properties.
A given program will do all its calculations in only 1 format. However, it may have to read or write a data file for a program that uses the other format. To help with this, the library supplies eight routines to convert between formats. These routines just convert between formats; they do not do any calculations so they work with programs that use either floating point format.
These routines can be called as a two argument subroutine, or as a single argument functions of the appropriate type.
Some sites disable hex mode entirely with during system startup.
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