Extracting the exponent and mantissa of a Javascript Number

Question

Is there a reasonably fast way to extract the exponent and mantissa from a Number in Javascript?

AFAIK there\'s no way to get at the bits behind a Number in Javascri

Answer 1

My Haskell is non-existent. Here's a solution in JavaScript. As others have noted, the key is to calculate the binary logarithm to get the exponent.

From http://blog.coolmuse.com/2012/06/21/getting-the-exponent-and-mantissa-from-a-javascript-number/

function decodeIEEE64 ( value ) {

    if ( typeof value !== "number" )
        throw new TypeError( "value must be a Number" );

    var result = {
        isNegative : false,
        exponent : 0,
        mantissa : 0
    };

    if ( value === 0 ) {

        return result;
    }

    // not finite?
    if ( !isFinite( value ) ) {

        result.exponent = 2047;

        if ( isNaN( value ) ) {

            result.isNegative = false;
            result.mantissa = 2251799813685248; // QNan

        } else {

            result.isNegative = value === -Infinity;
            result.mantissa = 0;

        }

        return result;
    }

    // negative?
    if ( value < 0 ) {
        result.isNegative = true;
        value = -value;
    }

    // calculate biased exponent
    var e = 0;
    if ( value >= Math.pow( 2, -1022 ) ) {   // not denormalized

        // calculate integer part of binary logarithm
        var r = value;

        while ( r < 1 )  { e -= 1; r *= 2; }
        while ( r >= 2 ) { e += 1; r /= 2; }

        e += 1023;  // add bias
    }
    result.exponent = e;

    // calculate mantissa
    if ( e != 0 ) {

        var f = value / Math.pow( 2, e - 1023 );
        result.mantissa = Math.floor( (f - 1) * Math.pow( 2, 52 ) );

    } else { // denormalized

        result.mantissa = Math.floor( value / Math.pow( 2, -1074 ) );

    }

    return result;
}