Decimal floating point (3 or 4 binary bits), and the rest of the significand uses the densely packed decimal (DPD) encoding. Unlike the binary integer significand version, where the exponent changed position and came before the significand, this encoding combines the leading 2 bits of the exponent and the leading digit (3 or 4 bits) of the significand into the five bits that follow the sign bit. This is followed by a fixed-offset exponent continuation field. Finally, the significand continuation field made of 2, 5, or 11 10-bit "declets", each encoding 3 decimal digits. If the first two bits after the sign bit
Repeating decimal 9. Knowing just that, a general repeating decimal can be expressed as a fraction without having to solve an equation. For example, one could reason: It is possible to get a general formula expressing a repeating decimal with an "n" digit period (repetend length), beginning right after the decimal point, as a fraction: More explicitly one gets the following cases. If the repeating decimal is between 0 and 1, and the repeating block is "n" digits long, first occurring right after the decimal point, then the fraction (not necessarily reduced) will be the integer number represented by the "n"-digit block