[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #56971] "format short" no longer switches to scientific notation for very large or small values

[Rik]

URL:
  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?56971>

                 Summary: "format short" no longer switches to scientific
notation for very large or small values
                 Project: GNU Octave
            Submitted by: rik5
            Submitted on: Mon 30 Sep 2019 10:53:01 AM PDT
                Category: Interpreter
                Severity: 3 - Normal
                Priority: 5 - Normal
              Item Group: Regression
                  Status: Confirmed
             Assigned to: None
         Originator Name: 
        Originator Email: 
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
                 Release: dev
        Operating System: Any

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Details:

There has been a regression with "format short" and small or large numbers. 
It used to be that the format would automatically switch to scientific
notation when the number got pretty large or pretty small.  Now (dev branch),
Octave correctly displays the number of significant digits (5 for short
format), but will display as many '0's as required which is new behavior.

What should happen when we have small numbers?  Should we end up printing a
lot of zeros?  That is what happens now.


x = [-pi, 0, pi];
x*1e-6
ans =

  -0.0000031416
              0
   0.0000031416


Before, we would switch over to scientific notation at a certain point.  These
are the results from version 3.4.3


octave-3.4.3:5> x*1e-3
ans =

  -0.0031416
   0.0000000
   0.0031416

octave-3.4.3:6> x*1e-4
ans =

  -3.1416e-04
   0.0000e+00
   3.1416e-04


I think we should change back to changing the format as necessary to keep the
numbers more readable.





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