Comment by wruza

Are you asking for pow(2, n)? Or for `float mkfloat(int e, int m)` which literally implements the given formula? I doubt that the notation you’re suggesting will be used in code, except for really rare bitwise cases.

The initial precision doesn’t really matter, because if you plan to use this value in a computation, it will quickly accumulate an error, which you have to deal with anyway. There are three ways to deal with it: 1) ignore it, 2) account for it, 3) use numeric methods which retain it in a decent range. You may accidentally (1)==(3), but the problem doesn’t go away in general.