G'day Dr Manhattan,

Saying "is not very useful" is not very useful to us. What format would you find useful? sprintf may do what you want; its documentation has copious examples. Here's a few possibilities: 

$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -le '
    my $x = 9**-10;
    print "$x";
    print sprintf "%f" => $x;
    print sprintf "%.15f" => $x;
    print sprintf "%.31f" => $x;
    print sprintf "%g" => $x;
    print sprintf "%.15g" => $x;
    print sprintf "%.31g" => $x;
'
2.86797199079244e-10
0.000000
0.000000000286797
0.0000000002867971990792441349306
2.86797e-10
2.86797199079244e-10
2.86797199079244134930566254989e-10

[download]

-- Ken

In reply to Re: Printing a very small number by kcott
in thread Printing a very small number by Dr Manhattan

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