It can be. That's up to you. At the time I wrote this sub, I wanted something that *ALWAYS* returns a number in scientific notation. Not just any number but a number in a specific format. You see, the return value ALWAYS starts with a plus or minus sign, then it's followed by ONE DIGIT, ( then a decimal point, then one or more digits ), then a letter 'E' which is then followed by a plus or minus sign, then a number. Stop.

(I wrote this function in QBASIC first, and then I ported it to Perl. So, you can tell that the code has a QBASIC-ish style and structure. But it's okay. The main thing is that it works.)