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
Decimal is an infinite decimal, that, after some place repeats indefinitely the same sequence of digits (for example ). An infinite decimal represents a rational number if and only if it is a repeating decimal or has a finite number of nonzero digits. Many numeral systems of ancient civilisations use ten and its powers for representing numbers, probably because there are ten fingers on two hands and people started counting by using their fingers. Examples are Armenian numerals, Brahmi numerals, Greek numerals, Hebrew numerals, Roman numerals, and Chinese numerals. Very large numbers were difficult to represent in these old numeral systems,