<p dir="auto">In Matlab there's the <code class="notranslate">format</code> command, which provides output format modification for e.g. the displayed precision and other things like engineering format. As an engineer, the latter is of particular interest to me, since only showing exponents which are multiples of 3, makes it a lot easier to work with calculated values. This should affect both display() and show(). Could this be implemented?</p>
<p dir="auto">I want change output format for numbers (stand alone floats, float matrix, <code class="notranslate">BigFloat</code>s). I can do it in IPython by using <code class="notranslate">%precision</code> magic function. I didn't find any equivalent in Julia.</p>
<p dir="auto">I know that I can use <code class="notranslate">round</code> but it actually returns different number. It's also cumbersome to convert arrays with combination <code class="notranslate">map</code> + <code class="notranslate">round</code>. One another problem: I didn't get how to change real or output precision of <code class="notranslate">BigFloat</code>: <code class="notranslate">set_bigfloat_precision</code> changes precision for all new <code class="notranslate">BigFloat</code>s, <code class="notranslate">copy</code> and <code class="notranslate">deepcopy</code> don't help (they copy value irrespective of new default <code class="notranslate">BigFloat</code> precision), naive precision change via <code class="notranslate">BigFloat.prec</code> corrupts it.</p>
<p dir="auto">I know, that I handle lot's of different topics in this question and I as a programmer understand that lot's of difficulties lays in output formats. But my friend, mathematician asked me: "Why can I just type %precision in my IPython notebook but not in Julia? Isn't output format change essential feature?".</p>