Inside Anatella, there are basically two different notations to display floating-point numbers:
•Standard notation.
•Scientific notation.
•“Short” notation (that is the shortest of the 2 above notations)
Here are some examples:
|
Example 1 (a primary key) |
Example 2 (a small number) |
Example 3 (a large number) |
Example 4 (high precision number) |
Example 5 (procent or any number) |
Number |
123456789 |
0.0000002 |
120000000 |
1-0.9-0.1 |
5.3 |
Standard notation limited to 16 chars (%.16f) |
123456789 |
0.0000002 |
120000000 |
-0 |
5.3 |
Scientific notation limited to 16 chars (%.16e) |
1.23456789E+08 |
2e-007 |
1.2e+008 |
-2.775557561562891e-017 |
5.3e+000 |
Shortest notation limited to 16 chars (%.16g) |
123456789 |
2e-007 |
1.2e+008 |
-2.775557561562891e-017 |
5.3 |
Standard notation using 6 chars to represent the fractional part (%f) |
123456789.000000 |
0.000000 |
120000000.000000 |
-0.000000 |
5.300000 |
Scientific notation limited to 6 chars (%e) |
1.234567e+008 |
2e-007 |
1.2e+008 |
-2.77556e-017 |
5.3e+000 |
Shortest notation limited to 6 chars (%g) |
1.234567e+008 |
2e-007 |
1.2e+008 |
-2.77556e-017 |
5.3 |
Standard notation limited to 5 chars (and 3 chars are used to represent the fractional part) (%5.3f) |
1.23E+08 |
0.000 |
120000000.000 |
-0.000 |
5.300 |
The “shortest” notation is noted (%g). It’s based on either the standard (%f) or the scientific (%e) notation. The “shortest” notation is the more “compact” of the 2 basic notations (standard or scientific). Furthermore, trailing zeros are truncated, and the decimal point appears only if one or more digits follow it.
For the (%.16g): The scientific notation is used only when the exponent of the value is less than –4 or greater than 16.
For the (%g): The scientific notation is used only when the exponent of the value is less than –4 or greater than 6.
To select a number notation follow these guidelines:
•The easiest to read and the most compact notation is usually the (%g) notation.
This is the default notation that is used everywhere inside Anatella.
The (%g) notation is used:
oinside the data preview window.
oas default notation when exporting your data inside a simple text file.
oto (automatically) convert a number to a string inside the 
Calculator Action.
•The (%g) notation works very well almost all the time. There however are 2 cases when it’s better to use the (%.16g) notation rather than the (%g) notation:
oWhen the number that you want to display is a primary key. In such case, you never want to use the scientific notation (especially for large numbers): See the example 1 here above.
oWhen you are exporting your data to another software for further processing, you don’t want any “rounding” or “truncation” errors that might jeopardize the next computations: See the example 4 here above.
•When your numbers are “percents”, then it’s sometime better to use the (%5.3f) notation to obtain a nicer and clearer display.
If you want to use other notations inside Anatella, you can manually edit the .anatella files with a text editor and write the requested notation in it.
If you want more information about the different notations (%g,%e,%f) and the different precisions (%.16g or %5.3f), please refer to the following webpages:
•About printf:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wc7014hz%28v=vs.90%29.aspx
•About notations (%g,%e,%f):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hf4y5e3w%28v=vs.90%29.aspx
•About precision:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/0ecbz014%28v=vs.90%29.aspx