# Default Real (Float) kind?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/default-real-float-kind/129631>\
**Category:** Internals & Design\
**Tags:** float\
**Created:** [June 4, 2025, 7:59am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/default-real-float-kind/129631 "2025-06-04T07:59:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 32

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**Author:** ![Tamas\_Papp](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tamas_papp/32/25949_2.png) [@Tamas\_Papp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tamas_Papp)\
**Post date:** [June 6, 2025, 9:24am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/default-real-float-kind/129631/32 "2025-06-06T09:24:32Z")

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> [@VinceNeede](#):
>
> since it does not appear easy to make and that the community does not seem very interested into having it there

It is still not clear what “it” is.

As far as I can reconstruct, the desired feature is an option to change the parsing of floating point literals, such as `-2.37`. As usual, the devil is in the details.

Changing it globally (based on a compiler option, at startup) would break a lot of code that assumes that those literals are `Float64`. My guess would be that you would not get past loading Base to get a REPL without an error.

Changing in the context of loading a package or a single file could, theoretically, be achieved, but that seems to be insufficient for your purposes, and is also kind of icky because a global state would affect parsing.

I wonder if we are facing an [XY problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem): you want to do something, know a feature in Fortran that does it, and you want to do the same in Julia. But, thank God, Julia is not Fortran. You cannot just transplant a feature like that.

It would be great if you posted a self-contained MWE of what you are trying to do, then you could get better advice.

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