GNU bug report logs - #25557
Documentation of format doesn't describe "g" accurately

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From: Clément Pit--Claudel <clement.pitclaudel <at> live.com>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 25557-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#25557: Documentation of format doesn't describe "g" accurately
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2017 10:04:33 -0500

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On 2017-01-28 03:37, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> …
> Fixed.
>> …
>
> I don't understand what you are trying to say (nor the significance of
> the '.'  flag in the example).  '#' forces %g to leave the trailing
> zeros after the decimal, so I added that -- is that what you wanted to
> say?
>
>> …
> Fixed.
>
>> Similar problems seem to exist in the actual documentation.
> If you mean the ELisp manual, I fixed that as well.

Thanks a lot! My comment about '#' was that the description of '#' suggested that it would only change things when the precision is 0 (which wasn't true).

>> On a related note, is there a way to get a shortest representation of a number? Something like %g, but without exponents.
> 
> Sorry, I don't understand the question.  How can you represent an
> arbitrary number without exponents at all, except by %f?

I'd like something like this (with a hypothetical %q):

  (format "%.3q" 3) ⇒ "3"
  (format "%.3q" 3.00) ⇒ "3"
  (format "%.3q" 3.30) ⇒ "3.3"
  (format "%.3q" 3.05) ⇒ "3.05"
  (format "%.3q" 3.352) ⇒ "3.35"
  (format "%.3q" 3100000) ⇒ "3100000"

This is in fact just the same as 'g', except for the last entry (%g produces "3.1e+06"). Is this achievable?

Thanks!
Clément.

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