Getting unformated numbers to ALPHA

[hth]

This has been discussed in the past.

What is "unnecessary digits"? It depends on what you are doing. Normally calculations involve round-off errors and the concept of precision of numbers being input.

Consider if you measure something with a ruler, a calliper or micro-meter. You will have different precision in the input. Showing a lot of decimals in the result makes little sense. You probably have a feeling for how many digits you can trust in the output and should set the display accordingly. The same in X as when appending to alpha register.

Other calculators show all digits and cut zeroes. Showing a long series of decimal far beyond the precision of the input makes no sense, and when encountered on a Casio (of the days) you need to round it in your head. It was much better with the HP-41.

Always three digits I was told in my engineering class, so I put my HP-41 in ENG 03 and got what I needed without having to bother about all the insignificant digits.

So to summarize, use a proper display setting. Those decimals winding off are probably just incorrect anyway. Whether they happen to be zero or not is (probably) irrelevant. You need to understand how much precision you have in your calculation and what is desirable. Configure the display setting on your HP-41 accordingly.