title: what's the largest number float type can hold?
body: <p>I'm new to programming and have recently come up with this simple question .
  float type has 32 bits in which 8 bits are for the whole number part (the mantissa).
  so my question is can float type hold numbers bigger than 255.9999 ?</p>
  <p>and I would also appreciate if someone told me why this code is behaving unexpectedly. Is it a related issue?</p>
  <pre><code>int main(){
  float a=123456789.1;
  printf(&quot;%lf&quot;,a);
  return 0;
  }
  </code></pre>
  <p>for which the output is :</p>
  <pre><code>123456792.000000
  </code></pre>