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 require the terminating decimal to be negative). For example, It follows that any repeating decimal with period "n", and "k" digits after the decimal point that do not belong to the repeating part, can be written as a (not necessarily reduced) fraction whose denominator is (10 − 1)10. Conversely the period of the repeating decimal of a fraction "c"/"d" will be (at most) the smallest number "n" such that 10 − 1 is divisible by "d". For example, the fraction 2/7 has "d" = 7, and the smallest "k" that makes 10 − 1 divisible by 7 is "k" =