[Free42] Numbers reformatted in program mode

[Thomas Okken]

Some background: Free42 stores numbers in programs in floating-point format, because storing them as a sequence of digits, like the real HP-42S does, would have been too slow.

Speed may not seem like an issue with Free42 today, but one of the platforms I targeted originally was PalmOS 3, which ran on 16 MHz 68000 CPUs, and on that platform, I was barely able to match the speed of the original calculator, so I optimized for speed wherever I could.

Storing numbers as a sequence of digits would have meant performing a decimal-to-binary conversion each time a number line was executed, and those conversions are computationally expensive. Storing numbers in floating-point format AND as a series of digits would have taken up more memory, which was also at a premium in PalmOS.

Given that the limitations that existed back then are no longer an issue, I could fix this, and I would like to, since the current behavior can be confusing, and it would be better to have byte counts that ALWAYS match those in program listings, even when they contain numbers that aren't minimal-length, like 1000 instead of 1E3. The only reason that I haven't done this yet is that it would be a lot of work, and given how minor an issue this is, it has never made it to the top of my to-do list yet... But given that that to-do list is getting shorter, some day I will get around to it. I'm not going to speculate when that will be, though!