Question

What is the largest exponent possible in a double-precision float?

Answer 1

Basically single exactitude floating purpose arithmetic deals with thirty two bit floating purpose numbers whereas double exactitude deals with sixty four bit. The amount of bits in double exactitude will increase the utmost price which will be hold on furthermore as increasing the exactitude (i.e. the amount of great digits).

The bits for the exponent have 2 reserved values, one for encryption zero and subnormal numbers, and one for encryption ∞ and NaNs. As a results of this, the vary of traditional exponents is 2 smaller than you'd otherwise expect. See §3.4 of the IEEE-754 commonplace (w is that the variety of bits within the exponent — eleven within the case of binary64):

The vary of the encodings biased exponent E shall include:

Each number between one and 2w – 2, inclusive, to encrypt traditional numbers

The reserved price zero to encrypt ±0 and subnormal numbers

The reserved price 2w – one to encrypt ±∞ and NaNs.