Idea

Serge A avatar image
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Serge A suggested Ben Wilson commented

Engineering notation for floating point numbers

Eventually simulation is about numbers. It would be nice if Flexsim supported engineering notation (E-notation) for floating point numbers, like

1.25e9 instead of 1250000000 (BTW, did I type the correct number of zeros?)

1e-8 instead of 0.00000001 (did I type the correct number of zeros?)

This notation is available in most programming languages, is built-in in Excel and even in the default Windows calculator app. I would be hard pressed to find a moderately advanced calculation tool which doesn't support it.

This feature would greatly improve usability of the simulator environment for users who are already familiar with this E-notation (and I suppose there is a lot of overlap between Flexsim users, engineers and Excel power users). It would also be beneficial by eliminating a source of subtle modeling errors.

And if Flexscript floating point parser is overhauled, I'd like you to consider also another enhancement: an optional digit separator for long numbers, similar to underscore in Julia floating point numbers. For reference, in Julia 1_234_567.89 is equivalent to 1234567.89 and 1.23456789e6, but is easier to read.

flexscriptfeature requestfloating point
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