Re: Display floating point numbers in compact, fixed-width format

I'm confused by this transition in the output from your test program

...
0.05555555555        (+0.055556)
-0.05555555555       (-0.055556)

0.5555555555         (   +0.556)
-0.5555555555        (   -0.556)
...
[download]

I realise that the answer could just be, "Because that's what I want!", but why suddenly start throwing away precision in favour of whitespace? And why at this point?

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Comment on Re: Display floating point numbers in compact, fixed-width format Download Code

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Re^2: Display floating point numbers in compact, fixed-width format (thanks) by tye (Sage) on Sep 24, 2003 at 17:12 UTC
The motivation is: Numbers of similar magnitude line up their decimal points But it appears I have an off-by-one error for when to transition to that other format. So I've changed `-2 => '+0.000000',` [download] to `-1 => '+0.000000',` [download] and added some more test cases (which found another bug that I've fixed -- stripping trailing '0's when I shouldn't). Thanks for catching that. At which points to change format are partially a matter of taste. The first three formats have very little room for matters of taste: `-100 => '+1.0e-999', -10 => '+1.00e-99', -5 => '+1.000e-9',` [download] (the most likely change would be to change "-5", probably to something a bit closer to zero). The last three have only slightly more room: `+9 => '+1.000e+9', +99 => '+1.000e99', +99999 => '+1.00e999',` [download] but the middle ground leaves lots of room for trade-offs. In particular, I wanted small integers to line up nicely (I chose -9999..9999 for my definition of "small") and I wanted a +0.0 format so that we can tell near-integers from non-integers for as long as possible. The +0.000000 and +0 formats allow us to delay going to 'e' format for as long as possible. Finally, add in a desire for fewer formats so that numbers are more likely to line up at their (perhaps implied) decimal points, and I'm stuck with what I used above. (: - tye	[reply] [d/l] [select]

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Re^2: Display floating point numbers in compact, fixed-width format (thanks)
by tye (Sage) on Sep 24, 2003 at 17:12 UTC

The motivation is:

Numbers of similar magnitude line up their decimal points

But it appears I have an off-by-one error for when to transition to that other format. So I've changed

              -2 => '+0.000000',
[download]

              -1 => '+0.000000',
[download]

At which points to change format are partially a matter of taste. The first three formats have very little room for matters of taste:

            -100 => '+1.0e-999',
             -10 => '+1.00e-99',
              -5 => '+1.000e-9',
[download]

The last three have only slightly more room:

              +9 => '+1.000e+9',
             +99 => '+1.000e99',
          +99999 => '+1.00e999',
[download]

Finally, add in a desire for fewer formats so that numbers are more likely to line up at their (perhaps implied) decimal points, and I'm stuck with what I used above. (:

tye

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