Different number formats and representations

[tommens]

• Very large or very small decimal numbers should be expressible more compactly using the scientific notation or E-notation. for example, 6.022E23 would be considered as is equivalent to 6.022×10^23, which would be written as 6022 followed by 20 zeroes in "traditional" notation of natural numbers. Similarly, 1.6E-35 would be considered equivalent to 1.6×10^(−35) which would be written as 0.00...00016 (with lots of zeroes after the floating point of the decimal number).
• It should also be possible to represent and manipulate numbers in different bases n (eg. , 2=binary, 8= octal, 16=hexadecimal, and so on...), and to convert numbers between these different bases. Note that, in order to support hexadecimal numbers (especially in combination with a GUI, one also needs to be able to use the A to F characters in the number representation.
  To be discussed whether and how we want to support other bases above 10, and how to represent these numbers. We could easily go up to 36 (since we have 26 letters in the alphabet on top of the 10 digits from 0 to 9. I would not go higher than base 36, since in practice nobody will be using that.
• Finally, as supported on most scientific calculators, it should be possible to use and convert numbers from degrees or radians (the use of radians if often more intuitive and useful when working frequently with trigonometric functions like sin, cos, and so on).

[tommens]

I have distributed this functionality over issues #2 and #3 by modifying their description accordingly. Hence, the current issue can be closed since it has know become duplicate.