---
url: >-
  /statelake/scripting-reference/data-types/floating-point-single-double-extended.md
---

# Floating-point (Single, Double, Extended)

The default value for the **floating-point** data type is zero (0).

**Float** is a term that is used to represent floating point values, which are numbers that have any number of decimal places. Examples are 9.3, or 87.34567, or 3,567.36.

While a floating point number is referred to within **Statelake** functions using the keyword **float**, there is no data type called float - the data type **Single**, **Double** or **Extended** must be used.

**Single** data type uses only 4 bytes to store the mantissa of the **float** number in scientific notation, which determines the precision and storage size.

**Double** should be used for high accuracy operations, but **Extended** should be used for very high accuracy operations.

A **Double** data type variable can store a number between -5.0 x 10^324 and 1.7 x 10^308. These are extremely large negative and positive numbers - for instance, 1.7 x 10^308 equates to 1.7E308 or 170 followed by another 306 zeros and then a decimal point.

If a field within a **DB Definition** or **File Definition** is specified as **Float** then it may require a display format for it to be correctly saved to the database or file with the correct number of decimal places.

Use the display format #0.00 to display as 2 decimal places. For more information regarding the formatting of floating-point numbers, please refer to [FormatFloat](/statelake/scripting-reference/functions-and-procedures/formatting-functions/formatfloat) for information regards the **FormatFloat** function, and [Format Specifiers](/statelake/scripting-reference/functions-and-procedures/formatting-functions/format-specifiers/) for a list of available formats.

An **Extended** variable is used for scientific type data and can store an even larger number between -3.6 x 10^4951 and 1.1 x 10^4932. Again, these are humungous numbers.

If you try to store a number in a data type that is unable to fit that number you will receive an **Overflow Error**.

**Declaration**: var myvariable : single;

var myvariable : double;

var myvariable : extended;

A stand-alone example of these follows -

```pascal
procedure ScriptEvent (var Value : variant);
var
  mynum : single;
  myvariable : double;
  thisvariable : extended;
begin
  mynum := 0.2;
  LogInfo('Howdy.  The value of mynum is '+FloatToStr(mynum));
  myvariable := 123.45;
  LogInfo('Howdy.  The value of myvariable is '+FloatToStr(myvariable));
  thisvariable := 901345.627498;
  LogInfo('Howdy.  The value of thisvariable is '+FloatToStr(thisvariable));

end;
```