What is the proper format string for float?

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Mr M.
Mr M. on 26 May 2015
Commented: Walter Roberson on 10 Jun 2015
I would like to print a float without unnecessary characters. 0.2, 1.25, 0.02, but in case of lot of digits, I would like to cut the last digits: 1.234 to 1.23 %f, %.2f is not good I think

Answers (2)

Dasharath Gulvady
Dasharath Gulvady on 29 May 2015
If you are looking for a way to round off the decimal values, see the below thread:
  1 Comment
Mr M.
Mr M. on 10 Jun 2015
The problem is that %.2f is not good for me, since I dont want to show unnecessary zeros! For example 0.50 instead of 0.5. But 0.45 should be 0.45

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Guillaume
Guillaume on 10 Jun 2015
Edited: Guillaume on 10 Jun 2015
There is no formatting option that does exactly what you want. You could switch to using '%g' instead of '%f', this does not print trailing zeros, but the precision is then the number of significant digits instead of the number of digits after the decimal point. Furthermore '%g' switches to exponential notation if the magnitude of the number is too big or too small.
For the examples, you've given:
sprintf(n, '%.4g')
works

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