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IEEE FLOAT

The 4 byte float (8 bits per byte) is defined as: 
     byte1       byte2       byte3        byte4
   xxxx xxxx   xxxx xxxx   xxxx xxxx    xxxx xxxx
  |s|<=ex=====>|<==============fr==============>|  
      (8)                     (23)
sign|exponent  |            fraction            |

    value =  (-1)^s  *  2^(ex-127) *  1.fr 

             1E-38< value < 3E+38

In converting between the two float formats, an underflow is set to zero, and an overflow is set to the maximum value defined by the format.