This book presents floating-point arithmetic in a somewhat generalized form which allows for variations in the radix and the word length. However, instead of striving for extreme generality, the book discusses the arithmetic of the IBM System/360 in detail and generalizes it where it is convenient to do so.

The book discusses the details of what actually happens when floating-point arithmetic is performed during the execution of the program, and the emphasis is on the quality of the answers produced. It is my hope that, by making the reader more aware of the arithmetic that will be performed as a result of the FORTRAN statement he writes, the book will contribute to the production of better programs.

This book is directed toward two different types of readers. First, it is addressed to the obvious audience of those who are interested in using higher-level languages to write programs which will perform floating-point computation. Second, it is also directed toward the compiler designers and machine designers who are concerned with floating-point operations. The material presented here has been found to be of interest to this group because, by illustrating the way floating-point arithmetic is used to solve problems, it leads to an understanding of the reasons for incorporating various features in the hardware and in the languages.