Numeric leaves
When the symbol or type processor knows that a numeric leaf is next in the symbol or type record, the next two bytes of the symbol or type string are examined. If the value of these two bytes is less than LF_NUMERIC (0x8000), then the two bytes contain the actual numeric value. If the value is greater than or equal to LF_NUMERIC (0x8000), then the numeric data follows the two-byte leaf index in the format specified by the numeric leaf index. It is the responsibility of routines reading numeric fields to handle the potential non alignment of the data fields. See the Section 4 on numeric leaves for details.