Re: Converting Hex to Float (and vise versa)

[hawtin]

It's even more complex than that, you have to take into account the architecture of the CPU as well. When I did this I found it most usefull to start from floats and get to the hex. I also did it via binary:

$f2_5 = unpack("b64",pack("d",2.5));
print $f2_5 . "\n";
# Will return something like 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000
+00000000010000000000010

What I have done is to convert hex to binary then (possibly) shuffle the binary to a form suitable for this CPU and use pack/ unpack to assemble the float.

{
  my($endian,$binary2double_fun);

sub deduce_endian
  {
    my($v);

    # Deduce the machine's native FP format by encoding the 
    # number 2.5 as a bit string.  Once we know how to get
    # from doubles to bit strings we can deduce the function
    # for doing the reverse
    $v = unpack("b64",pack("d",2.5));
    if($v eq "00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000100000
+00000010")
      {
        # Intel or something like it
        $endian = "ieee-little";
        $binary2double_fun = sub 
          {
            # We have to reverse the bitstring
            my $bits = reverse(shift);

            # Then map to floats
            return(unpack("d",pack("b64",$bits)));
          };
      }
    elsif($v eq "01000000000001000000000000000000000000000000000000000
+00000000000")
      {
        # *NIX hardware
        $endian = "ieee-big";
        $binary2double_fun = sub 
          {
            # a combination of pack and unpack will do it
            my $bits = shift;
            return(unpack("d",pack("b64",$bits)));
          };
      }
    else
      {
        print STDERR "Not configured for this machine yet\n";
        exit(20);
      }
  }

sub hex2double
  {
    my($in,$out,$val) = @_;

    deduce_endian() if(!$endian);

    # The string we were given was a hex representation of 
    # the bits of an IEEE 64' double in network order.  
    # Convert to a string of 64 "0" and "1"s.  We cannot 
    # use pack here because then the order depends on the 
    # hardware
    $out = hex2binary($in);

    # Then map this to our double representation
    return &{$binary2double_fun}($out) if($binary2double_fun);

    # No mapping function defined!
    return 0.0;
  }
}

I have my own hex2binary function for various reasons that are not worth dwelling on. It sounds like you want one that takes into account the byte order of the input.