Cominucation Serial through usb using Mega1280

Using Arduino Programming Questions
1

Hi people,
I working on a proyect in which I Have a buffer made up by floats to send to an Arduino Mega1280 through the usb port. The problrem comes when I realised that Arduino can´t interpret those float I send through the Serial port because Arduino Mega just store data byte to byte, is that correct?.
So my question is, if there is a function or method by which those float can be interpreted by arduino.
If I send a float value to Arduino, it is store in memory as 4bytes, is that correct?, therefore if a send a value in float x=25.89, this value is store in Arduino as 2 5 . 8 9, I mean one byte for character, so what i need to do in arduino IDE to interpret those bytes as a float.

thanks

2

use function "atof"

3

If I send a float value to Arduino, it is store in memory as 4bytes, is that correct?

That depends on how you send the float. If you send it in binary, yes. If you convert it to a string to send, no.

therefore if a send a value in float x=25.89, this value is store in Arduino as 2 5 . 8 9,

N0. '2', '5', '.', '8', '9', '\0' is 6 bytes.

so what i need to do in arduino IDE to interpret those bytes as a float.

When? How is the Arduino to know that the last character of the string that represents a float has arrived?

Plus, of course, what knut_ny says.