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According to this post it is saying Two's complement is only for integers, but in Wolframalpha is is saying the Two's complement of 16.5 is 0010000.1, how?

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  • $\begingroup$ There are different names for one and the same thing. And there are different things going by the same name. Welcome, stranger. We call the prominent centre of attraction "earth". Gravity is a misconception: earth sucks. $\endgroup$
    – greybeard
    Commented May 17, 2020 at 6:57

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It seems that WolframAlpha is using fixed-point representation. In effect, it is doubling your number and then representing it as two's-complement.

In more detail, WolframAlpha is guessing that you are interested in fixed-point representations of the form $$ xxxxxxx.x $$ in binary, that is, 8 bits in total, with the "decimal" point at the fixed position between the 7th and 8th bits. Using two's complement, you can represent all numbers from $-64$ (represented as $1000000.0$) to $+63.5$ (represented as $0111111.1$).

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