You do get it! <g> Your second sentence is a perfect exposition of what I was trying to ask. Your last paragraph is a perfect exposition of the problem I am solving with the "K" notation.
Thanks all, especially JG. "Scaled" seems to be pretty good. Not sure what the opposite is? "NoScaled"? "Unscaled"? INTFMT(SCALED|NOSCALED) Decimal does not really cut it because it's base ten in any event, and a decimal point is absent in any event. Binary would be confusing, I think. I hear the people complaining about "nudity" (ahem) but the units are already specified. Giving an example, devoid here of all context BytesIn = 25.7K, BytesOut = 286.4M Yeah, I suppose it might say just plain In = 25.7KB, but, as we say, "the program doesn't work that way." (Also, due to other constraints it MUST appear in a "string" format message, not in tabular form like most mainframe reports.) And yes, I am doing it "with my own code" -- there is no built-in support in the language I am using (C++). Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Joel C. Ewing Sent: Thursday, May 02, 2013 3:30 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: OT - What is the proper term for "K" notation? I get it. The question is not about what scaling factor is being specified, or even the name of a specific measurement units designation, but a more general-level question of what kind of name would one give to the concept of a scaled number representation like "23.5K" or "23.6M", if for example you were writing a computer output routine to print a number in that format, rather than printing it as an integer format, or a fixed point value format, or floating point value with exponent format. Perhaps you could just call it a "scaled integer value" where "M" is an indication of scaling factor, but I can't recall ever hearing someone attempt to give such an external notation a formal name. The usage of "M" in a context like "MB" is as a prefix, and the standards of which I am aware only formally define its usage when combined with a unit of measurement, not stand-alone. The latter format (45600000) I would simply call "integer" or possibly "unscaled integer" if the other is called "scaled". The term "scaled integer" does appear in the context of some languages like COBOL, but it applies to the implied 10**n multiplier in an internal data representation, not to scaling specific to input or output of values. One can certainly find examples of applications, particularly in the interactive world, where output values are dynamically scaled so as to display the most significant digits while still using a limited number of characters as the values get increasingly large: as in displaying "900 B" as "900 B", but "212,123 B" as "212.1 KB", "616,212,123 B" as "616.2MB", etc.. It would make sense to be able to generalize such a numeric format in the absence of a specific measurement unit, but I'm not sure what I would call it other than "dynamically scaled integer". There surely must a programming language somewhere with direct support for such an output format. I'm just not personally aware of any. Joel C. Ewing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
