Scientific format for command window display and specifying constants

MATLAB has evolved alot over the years and I'm surprised that it does not yet (or at least I'm missing it) support scientific display formats in the command window and/or allow variables/constants to be specified in scientific units similarly to the way it gracefully handles engineering notion(e.g. 1.43e-2). Scientific units I'm referring to would be something like the following characters:

G: 1e9 M: 1e6 m: 1e-3 u: 1e-6 n: 1e-9 etc.

As command line scientific notation format example

>> a = 1e9

   a =
       1.00G

and as definition example:

>> a = 1.234u; %equivalent to 1.234e-6

Maybe someone has developed a workaround for this already or the functionality exists and I'm just not able to locate it somehow. In any case, I would be most appreciative if someone could point me to a solution to realize this functionality.

Answer 1

[Christopher Beaudoin]

Sorry I'm tired. Scientific notation is handled sort-of by MATLAB. What I'm looking for is an implementation of the scientific prefix symbols. These prefixes are used in other higher level programming languages as well as modern test equipment. I imagine others would find such support useful in MATLAB as well.

[Walter Roberson]

I don't seem to recall any programming language that supports those? Other than FORTH, that is ?