Re: [bug-gawk] Is -M enabled by default?

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

>> > gawk -e 'BEGIN{ x = 1; for(i=1;i<1000;++i) { x = x * 2; printf("%4d  
>> > %.3e\n", i, x)} }'
>> The above code does not prove x is stored as double, because even if x
>> is stored as an arbitrary precision integer, it still can be converted
>> to double and printed with %e. Is there a way to print the underlying

Just change the loop limit in your original version from 1023 to 1025;
when i = 1024, the output number changes to "inf", because the computation
has overflowed.  The largest IEEE 754 64-bit binary format number is
+0x1.fffffffffffffp+1023 ~= 1.797_693_134_862_315_7e+308.

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