From: Boost-users [mailto:boost-users-bounces@lists.boost.org] On Behalf Of Clark Cianfarini
Sent: 30 January 2015 14:45
To: boost-users@lists.boost.org
Subject: Re: [Boost-users] [Serialization] XML: float format is scientific instead of human-readable since Boost 1.57

On Fri, Jan 30, 2015 at 4:04 AM, Frank Stähr <staehr@nue.tu-berlin.de> wrote:

Here a reminder to my most important question:

On 28.01.2015 at 18:07, Frank Stähr wrote:

Not really, this just makes it harder to read or edit XMLs now.
Is it possible for us to write the “old” XML format?

So I guess no?

The way our company chose to create human-readable XML is to serialize strings instead of doubles or floats.  We used a stringstream with std::setprecision to get a certain number of decimal places.  The number has a chance of being slightly different after de-serialization and pulling it out of the stringstream, just like the old serialization method.  This is okay for us, as we need human-readable XML more than exact round tripping.

Frank Stahr might also consider using 32-bit floats instead of double - if the precision of 6 decimal digits is enough.

This could much reduce the max number of decimal digits from 17 to 9

for 32-bit float  max_digits10 = 9 and the guaranteed digits10 is 6

for 64-bit double  max_digits10 = 15 and the guaranteed digits10 is 17

HTH too.

Paul

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Paul A. Bristow

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