Re: WIP: to_char, support for EEEE format

2009/7/30 Pavel Stehule <pavel(dot)stehule(at)gmail(dot)com>:
> 2009/7/29 Brendan Jurd <direvus(at)gmail(dot)com>:
>> I don't see any problem with extending this to allow up to 3 exponent
>> digits ... Pavel, any comment?
>
> I am not sure - this function should be used in reports witl fixed
> line's width. And I am thinking, so it's should be problem - I prefer
> showing some #.### chars. It's clean signal, so some is wrong, but it
> doesn't break generating long run reports (like exception in Oracle)
> and doesn't broke formating like 3 exponent digits.

Hmm. For what it's worth, I think Pavel makes a good point about the
number of exponent digits -- a large chunk of the use case for numeric
formatting would be fixed-width reporting.

Limiting to two exponent digits also has the nice property that the
output always matches the length of the format pattern:

9.99EEEE
1.23E+02

I don't know whether being able to represent 3-digit exponents
outweighs the value of reliable fixed-width output. Would anyone else
care to throw in their opinion? However we end up handling it, we
will probably need to flesh out the docs regarding this.

Cheers,
BJ