Option for "Engineering notation" - With toExponential()

[mgkr]

Option for "Engineering notation" - With toExponential()

[MikeMcl]

Well, I like toEngineering, but as engineering notation is a form of exponential notation it seems appropiate to handle it using toExponential.

The problem is that toExponential already takes a rounding mode as a second argument, and I don't want any methods here to have more than two parameters.

That leaves the option of using BigNumber.config. For example,

var n = new BigNumber(123);
n.toExponential();    // '1.23e+2'

BigNumber.config({ ENGINEERING: true });
n.toExponential();    // '0.123e+3'

[mgkr]

That (using config) might work.
Instead of a bool though, why not an integer - So one would have the chance of going multiples of 6 (or whatever) as well.
Very niche case if any would ever need that (I don't think I ever would).
But if making the change, it ought to be negligible to allow for an int setting over just a bool, so no reason to limit it imo.

PS:
Your example (123) is a bit misleading/wrong.
It should be output as just "123" - While 1234 would be 1.234e+3

[MikeMcl]

Yes, I was wondering how values less than 1000 should be properly handled, but having a toExponential return value without an exponent doesn't seem appropiate.

On second thoughts I think using toEngineering would be best, though not with an arbitrary multiple.

I think its a good suggestion and I'll put in on my to-do list and close for now.