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Re: Accessing bits in a floating point number [message #10424]

Fri, 21 November 1997 00:00

Thomas A. McGlynn
Messages: 23
Registered: March 1996

Junior Member

Brian Chafin wrote:
>
> I have a somewhat peculiar problem and would like to know if anyone has
> a solution for it.
>
> I am reading a 16-bit floating point number from an HDF file. This
> 16-bit number was originally two 1-byte integers which were stuffed into
> a 16-bit float. This was done in C and don't ask why it was done this
> way.
>
> When the float is read into IDL using the native IDL HDF commands, the
> result is a 32-bit float.
>
> Is there any way to extract the original two 1-byte integers from this
> IDL float?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Brian
>

You can convert the floats to a byte array and then look at the
bytes, e.g.,

myBytes = byte(myFloat,0, 4)

will make myBytes a byte array of dimension 4 with
the constituent bytes of myFloat. So assuming the
HDF routines converted it faithfully you can get the
two bytes back.

Hope this helps,
Tom McGlynn

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		Re: Accessing bits in a floating point number By: Thomas A. McGlynn on Fri, 21 November 1997 00:00
		Re: Accessing bits in a floating point number By: Kevin Ivory on Fri, 21 November 1997 00:00

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