On 2008-02-18, Mark Dickinson wrote:
> Mark Dickinson added the comment:
>
> I know I'm coming a bit late to this discussion, but I wanted to point
> out that the C99 standard does actually specify how many digits should
> be in the exponent of a "%e"-formatted number:
>
> In section 7.19.6, in the documentation for fprintf, it says:
>
> "The exponent always contains at least two digits, and only as many more
> digits as necessary to represent the exponent."
>
> Not that that's necessarily a reason for Python to do the same :)

I don't really see why Python shouldn't use as few digits as are needed:-)

The patch I submitted just made the exponent at least three digits.

But my aim was cross-platform consistency, and I still think (whether
using the fewest digits, the fewest but at least 2, or whatever other
logic) that the same logic should be used on all platforms since this
makes it easier to test cross-platform applications that output numbers
in exponential form.