FLOAT

The FLOAT function converts a given Expression into a single-precision floating-point value.

Examples

If A contains the integer value 6, it can be converted to floating-point and stored in the variable B by entering:

B = FLOAT(A)

Syntax

Result = FLOAT( Expression [, Offset [, D₁[, ..., D₈]]] )

Return Value

Returns a single-precision floating-point value or array of the same dimensions as the Expression. If Expression is a complex number, FLOAT returns the real part.

Arguments

Expression

The expression to be converted to single-precision floating-point.

Offset

Offset from beginning of the Expression data area. Specifying this argument allows fields of data extracted from Expression to be treated as single-precision floating point data.

D_i

When extracting fields of data, the D_i arguments specify the dimensions of the result. If no dimension arguments are given, the result is taken to be scalar.

The D_i arguments can be either an array or a series of scalar expressions specifying the dimensions of the result. If a single argument is specified, it can be either a scalar expression or an array of up to eight elements. If multiple arguments are specified, they must all be scalar expressions. Up to eight dimensions can be specified.

When converting from a string argument, it is possible that the string does not contain a valid floating-point value and no conversion is possible. The default action in such cases is to print a warning message and return 0. The ON_IOERROR procedure can be used to establish a statement to be jumped to in case of such errors.

Keywords

Thread Pool Keywords

This routine is written to make use of IDL’s thread pool, which can increase execution speed on systems with multiple CPUs. The values stored in the !CPU system variable control whether IDL uses the thread pool for a given computation. In addition, you can use the thread pool keywords TPOOL_MAX_ELTS, TPOOL_MIN_ELTS, and TPOOL_NOTHREAD to override the defaults established by !CPU for a single invocation of this routine. See Thread Pool Keywords for details.

Version History

Original

Introduced