Floating-point arithmetic operations can run into various problems. For example, the result computed might be either too big or too small to fit into the format, or there might be no way to calculate the result (as in trying to take the square root of a negative number, or trying to divide zero by zero). These are known as exceptions, because they indicate unusual or exceptional situations.

The ARM floating-point environment can handle an exception by inventing a plausible result for the operation and returning that result, or by trapping the exception.