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Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2008 21:25:15 -0400 (EDT)
From: Brian Hurt <bhurt@spnz.org>
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To: Paolo Donadeo <p.donadeo@gmail.com>
Cc: caml-list caml-list <caml-list@yquem.inria.fr>
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Strange behaviour of string_of_float
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X-Spam: no; 0.00; serialize:01 deserialize:01 ocaml:01 ocaml:01 printf:01 sprintf:01 wrote:01 encode:01 caml-list:01 int:01 int:01 behaviour:01 exp:02 exp:02 match:02 



On Sun, 22 Jun 2008, Paolo Donadeo wrote:

> I know what a float number is from my numerical analysis course :-).
>
> In any case, what is the suggested way to serialize/deserialize a
> float number in OCaml? The Sexplib, for example, suffers the same
> problem of the string_of_float function:.
>
> My intent is to extract an ASCII representation of an OCaml float
> value so that it can be used to recreate *exactly* the same value, at
> least on the same architecture.
>

Code something like this should work:

let encode_float x =
     match (classify_float x) with
     | FP_zero -> if (x = -0.0) then "-0.0" else "0.0"
     | FP_infinite -> if (x = neg_infinity) then "-INF" else "INF"
     | FP_nan -> "NaN"
     | _ ->
         let s = x < 0.0 in
         let x = abs_float x in
         let frac, exp = frexp x in
         let frac = frac *. 268435456.0 in (* 2^28 *)
         let i1 = int_of_float frac in
         let i2 = int_of_float ((frac -. (floor frac)) *. 268435456.0) in
         let exp = exp - 56 in
         let s2 = exp < 0 in
         let exp = if exp < 0 then -exp else exp in
         Printf.sprintf "%c%07X%07XX%c%X" (if s then '-' else '+') i1 i2
             (if s2 then '-' else '+') exp
;;


I'll leave the decode to you- it should be obvious, once you discover the 
ldexp function.

Brian