‘e’ in javascript numbers
I need to understand the following:
when I type 4e4 in Google Chrome’s console it returns 40000.
Can anyone help me to understand what is e in javascript numbers and what is the algorithm working for this?
Thanks in advance
4e4 is a floating-point number representation.
It consists of:
- Sign – S(+ or -)
- Mantissa – M(some number, normalized: 1.x where x is some sequence of digits)
- Exponent – E(represents a power of 10 that is Mantissa(M) multiplied with)
It is also a way of how floating-point numbers are stored on the system. For instance, for single-precision we get:
single-precision floating-point number representation
Together, it gives us:
-1^S * M * p^Ewhere p is the basis of the numerical system
So, in common sense, p can be anything so that 4e4 could be also 4 * 5^4 if p == 5
As we usually work with
decimal valuesp is equal to 10
And as was answered before, 4e4 == 4 * 10^4 (as 4 is a decimal value in this case)
‘e’ in a number like that is the same as ‘times 10 to the power of’
3.2e6 is 3.2×10^6
4*10^4
If the number was 4e5 this would be equal to 4*10^5
etc.
