google/benchmark

Introduce scientific notation for counters in console

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#818 opened on May 13, 2019

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enhancementgood first issuehelp wanted

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Description

Sometimes it becomes difficult to grasp immediately the differences between benchmarked functions that have a wide variance in a given counter. The aforementioned readability problem is due to the usage of the SI standard by default. This one below is an example where I am dealing with different functions to approximate sine, look at the absolute error calculated for each one: Screenshot_20190513_185727 It's not instantly obvious how much more precise the first function is, but it would be using scientific notation: Screenshot_20190513_202852

The usage might be as easy as:

state.counters["Foo"] = Counter(fooVal, benchmark::Counter::kScientificNotation);

Contributor guide

Research direction
Implement a new flag kScientificNotation for the Counter class to display counter values in scientific notation. Study the existing Counter implementation and add the flag to the enum, modify formatting logic to use scientific notation when the flag is set, and update existing tests.
Tech stack
cpp
Domain
testing
Issue type
Feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
2
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
Half day
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
Stale
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
Clear
Prerequisites
C++
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
50