[erlang-questions] convert strings like "1e-8" to floats.

[Oleksii Semilietov]

Hi all!

I playing with converting binaries and lists to floats and I found
something what I can't solve via elegant way. I believe it's my leakage of
understanding floats.

So, what is different between 1e-8 and 1.0e-8 ?

For example we have float as list "0.01".  It is easy to convert it to
float just via list_to_float("0.01").
But when floats coming from external world as binaries or lists which looks
like "1e-8", and not like "1.0e-8", I can't find proper way to convert it.

For example in PHP both 1e-8 and 1.0e-8 is equivalent
var_dump(floatval("1e-8") === floatval("1.0e-8")) returns true.
Javascript 1E-8 === 1.0E-8 is also true.

In Erlang

list_to_float("1.0E-8") =:= 0.00000001
true

but

list_to_float("1E-8") =:= 0.00000001.
** exception error: bad argument in function list_to_float/1 called as
list_to_float("1E-8")


How to convert it via right way?

-- 
Oleksii D. Semilietov
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