convert -10.978 to binary

Since the function dec2bin only works fornon negative integers, how can I convert -10.978to binary and vice versa ?

[Rik]

That depends on the definition you choose. As binary is simply a two-element number system (like decimal has 10 and hexadecimal has 16), there is no fundamental reason why you couldn't have something like 1001.11001

However, as far as I know, most people will use a floating point digit. One of the links I was shown in the side bar of this question is this FEX submission Floating number conversion to binary and vice-versa, it might be worth your while to check it out.

[Walter Roberson]

There are a rather large number of different binary representations for -10.978 . One of them is 1100000000100101111101001011110001101010011111101111100000000000 . One of them is 11000001001011111010010111100011 . There are many others; see https://www.mathworks.com/help/vision/ug/concepts-and-terminology.html

[John D'Errico]

I once wrote a tool that expands a float into a binary form.

B = [3     1    -1    -2    -3    -4    -5    -7   -10   -12   -13   -14   -15   -19   -20   -22   -24   -27   -28   -29   -30   -31   -32   -34   -35   -36   -37   -38   -41   -42   -43   -45   -46   -48   -49];
- sum(2.^B)

format long g

-sum(2.^B)
ans =
                   -10.978