Format decimal in shell command

Question

Input

  CTCF_1276       4.006055058150985e-03
  CTCF_1274       1.726979566495019e-02

Output

  CTCF_1276       4.00606e-03
  CTCF_1274       1.72698e-02

I know awk can do this very easily, but I don't like it because I need to escape the %.5e in the string if I want to call it from python. Does anyone have better way to do this?

Answer 1

• bash:

   printf '%.5e' 4.006055058150985e-03 

• python:

   print('{:.5e}'.format(4.006055058150985e-03)) 

• perl:

   printf '%.5e', 4.006055058150985e-03 

• awk:

   printf '%.5e', 4.006055058150985e-03