### 4.3 Single Precision Data Types

Octave includes support for single precision data types, and most of the functions in Octave accept single precision values and return single precision answers. A single precision variable is created with the `single` function.

single (x)

  Convert x to single precision type.

  See also: double.

for example:

    sngl = single (rand (2, 2))
         ⇒ sngl =
            0.37569   0.92982
            0.11962   0.50876
    class (sngl)
        ⇒ single

Many functions can also return single precision values directly. For example

    ones (2, 2, "single")
    zeros (2, 2, "single")
    eye (2, 2,  "single")
    rand (2, 2, "single")
    NaN (2, 2, "single")
    NA (2, 2, "single")
    Inf (2, 2, "single")

will all return single precision matrices.