I have found a glitch in Scratch. You are able to type the letter e in number inputs. This may or may not only work with my operating system and browser. I use Windows (64-bit) and Google Chrome (I don't know which version). Did anybody else know about this? Is it intentional?

Click the globe in between the emoticon menu and block menu for specific specs instead of just Windows 64-bit and Chrome.

e is allowed because you need it for scientific notation however it should be qualified with other numbers. You can also just use ‘-’ because you use it for negative numbers and have a similar issue. Wrote this to show the issue https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/103310531

Also allows dots, since they are decimal points. (The one slight oddity is that you can't type a plus character, which you might expect if you wanted to input “1E+10”, or something – but it's not needed ‘cos you can do “1E10” instead.)

Since you have minus and dot, you can type Morse Code into a number input (except for the gaps - guess you could use an “e” for that: “…e—e…” )

But, seriously, it really isn’t at all clear how to make it work well other than just allowing these characters to be typed in anywhere at any time – I mean, imagine what would happen if the input HAD to conform to a valid numerical value at all times, even while you're trying to edit what you've already typed into it…

BTW, see https://github.com/LLK/scratch-flash/issues/964

Letters are math terms. They are used for either pi, as in 3.141592653 etc., e, as in mc^2, or used for an unknown number, for example x*2=8, so x =4.

Carpit999 wrote:

Letters are math terms. They are used for either pi, as in 3.141592653 etc., e, as in mc^2, or used for an unknown number, for example x*2=8, so x =4.

How come you can only type e then. There's no x.

Let me try, Studi04040807
I think scratch does not understand that literally nearly every symbol is in math.

Studio04040807 wrote:

Carpit999 wrote:

Letters are math terms. They are used for either pi, as in 3.141592653 etc., e, as in mc^2, or used for an unknown number, for example x*2=8, so x =4.

How come you can only type e then. There's no x.

Carpit999 wrote:

Let me try, Studi04040807
I think scratch does not understand that literally nearly every symbol is in math.

No, this is a misunderstanding. You can't type symbols.

The point of the numerical input slots is to allow you to type numerical values, not symbols like pi, or e, or x.

The reason that it allows the letter ‘e’, and dot, and minus is because these characters appear in valid numerical values, such as “1.2345e-67”.

If you couldn't type these three characters (as well as digits 0-9) then you wouldn't be able to input a value like “1.2345e-67”.

Read through what I wrote above and what drmcw wrote just before that.

TheLogFather wrote:

Studio04040807 wrote:

Carpit999 wrote:

Letters are math terms. They are used for either pi, as in 3.141592653 etc., e, as in mc^2, or used for an unknown number, for example x*2=8, so x =4.

How come you can only type e then. There's no x.

Carpit999 wrote:

Let me try, Studi04040807
I think scratch does not understand that literally nearly every symbol is in math.

No, this is a misunderstanding. You can't type symbols.

The point of the numerical input slots is to allow you to type numerical values, not symbols like pi, or e, or x.

The reason that it allows the letter ‘e’, and dot, and minus is because these characters appear in valid numerical values, such as “1.2345e-67”.

If you couldn't type these three characters (as well as digits 0-9) then you wouldn't be able to input a value like “1.2345e-67”.

Read through what I wrote above and what drmcw wrote just before that.

No misunderstanding.

TheLogFather wrote:

Studio04040807 wrote:

Carpit999 wrote:

Letters are math terms. They are used for either pi, as in 3.141592653 etc., e, as in mc^2, or used for an unknown number, for example x*2=8, so x =4.

How come you can only type e then. There's no x.

Carpit999 wrote:

Let me try, Studi04040807
I think scratch does not understand that literally nearly every symbol is in math.

No, this is a misunderstanding. You can't type symbols.

The point of the numerical input slots is to allow you to type numerical values, not symbols like pi, or e, or x.

The reason that it allows the letter ‘e’, and dot, and minus is because these characters appear in valid numerical values, such as “1.2345e-67”.

If you couldn't type these three characters (as well as digits 0-9) then you wouldn't be able to input a value like “1.2345e-67”.

Read through what I wrote above and what drmcw wrote just before that.

Thank you, but I do not know what e means in 1.234e-67. Also, the e seems to do the same as if you had left the spot blank. Any number divided by e is still infinity.

Studio04040807 wrote:

Thank you, but I do not know what e means in 1.234e-67. Also, the e seems to do the same as if you had left the spot blank. Any number divided by e is still infinity.

It means “times ten to the power of”.

So, for example: 1.23456e-7 means 1.23456 x 10^-7, so that's 1.23456 / 10000000 which is 0.000000123456
Or, another: 5.43e21 means 5.43 x 10^21, which is 5.43 x 1000000000000000000000, i.e. 5430000000000000000000

It's a ‘shorthand’ way to write a value that's very small or very large.

Scratch allows you to type “e” in the number slots so you can enter numerical values in this format.

However, if you enter ONLY the “e” then it's not a valid numerical format, so Scratch just treats it as zero. Also, if you enter anything else that doesn't make any sense as a numerical value (e.g. “…—…”) then it's just taken as zero.

TheLogFather wrote:

Scratch allows you to type “e” in the number slots so you can enter numerical values in this format.

However, if you enter ONLY the “e” then it's not a valid numerical format, so Scratch just treats it as zero. Also, if you enter anything else that doesn't make any sense as a numerical value (e.g. “…—…”) then it's just taken as zero.

That is where the “issue” is though. The fact that you can have a custom block with a numerical input and it passes through something that is non-numerical. The built in scratch blocks taking numbers will treat it as 0 but a custom block numerical input won't.

drmcw wrote:

TheLogFather wrote:

Scratch allows you to type “e” in the number slots so you can enter numerical values in this format.

However, if you enter ONLY the “e” then it's not a valid numerical format, so Scratch just treats it as zero. Also, if you enter anything else that doesn't make any sense as a numerical value (e.g. “…—…”) then it's just taken as zero.

That is where the “issue” is though. The fact that you can have a custom block with a numerical input and it passes through something that is non-numerical. The built in scratch blocks taking numbers will treat it as 0 but a custom block numerical input won't.

Yes, you can pass anything you like in a custom block numerical input (yes, any string, if you drop a var/expression in there that's a string – e.g. drop in "join [hello ] [world]").

But it's how the param is used in the define script itself that's important. That's the point at which it gets converted to zero, if you use it where a numerical value should be (e.g. in a mathematical operator, etc.), if it's not actually a valid number – and that's true no matter what type of input param you claimed it to be.

If you use it elsewhere as a string, then it works just fine, even though you claimed it was a numerical type param…

Studio04040807 wrote:

TheLogFather wrote:

Studio04040807 wrote:

Carpit999 wrote:

Letters are math terms. They are used for either pi, as in 3.141592653 etc., e, as in mc^2, or used for an unknown number, for example x*2=8, so x =4.

How come you can only type e then. There's no x.

Carpit999 wrote:

Let me try, Studi04040807
I think scratch does not understand that literally nearly every symbol is in math.

No, this is a misunderstanding. You can't type symbols.

The point of the numerical input slots is to allow you to type numerical values, not symbols like pi, or e, or x.

The reason that it allows the letter ‘e’, and dot, and minus is because these characters appear in valid numerical values, such as “1.2345e-67”.

If you couldn't type these three characters (as well as digits 0-9) then you wouldn't be able to input a value like “1.2345e-67”.

Read through what I wrote above and what drmcw wrote just before that.

Thank you, but I do not know what e means in 1.234e-67. Also, the e seems to do the same as if you had left the spot blank. Any number divided by e is still infinity.

1.234e67 is 123400000000000… basically it would be 1234 + 67 0's

I feel this topic has had thorough conversation; there is nothing more to say about the topic, so I will close it.