Dropping Zeros ? [closed]

TEAM LANDCRUISER · Post by **TEAM LANDCRUISER** » 17 March 05 9:16 pm

I was just looking through some of the newer caches and noticed on the Smile wif Ronny cache that the co-ord's aren't complete ... or is the website just dropping the leading zeros? Location: S32Ã‚Â° 5.261' E115Ã‚Â° 55.000'
Smile wif Ronny

Mind Socket · Post by **Mind Socket** » 18 March 05 9:03 am

It's a locationless cache

TEAM LANDCRUISER · Post by **TEAM LANDCRUISER** » 18 March 05 9:39 am

Yes it it locationless but that wasn't the question

OK if your hung up on the locationless thing here's anuve wun ...
Dropping Zeros this isn't locationless ... Anuva One ... Anuva three ... there are lots, so I'm guessing it is just the dropped zero on them all and can ammend as necessary ... I downloaded the appropriate gpx files and the missing zeros re appear in GSAK so its really just a cosmetic thing unless you use the website to manually enter co-ords.

ian-and-penny · Post by **ian-and-penny** » 18 March 05 11:20 am

It may be just me, but are leading zeros all that important?

Mind Socket · Post by **Mind Socket** » 18 March 05 1:21 pm

Ah, leading zeros. Sorry, I thought you were referring to the trailing zeros on the first one.

Leading zeros are redundant, doesn't matter if they're not there, and there's no standard to my knowledge that requires them for lat/lon coords.

- R

TEAM LANDCRUISER · Post by **TEAM LANDCRUISER** » 18 March 05 2:02 pm

ian-and-penny wrote:It may be just me, but are leading zeros all that important?

No so long as eveyone is aware its the 'leading zero' that gets dropped, I'm not sure but of the ones I checked all were leading zeros but if a trailing zero is dropped as in Location: S32Ã‚Â° 5.261' E115Ã‚Â° 55.000' the combination of 05 or 50 minutes could well be over 50 kms. There could also be the case that someone just mistyped the co ord 25 or 54. But I'm think the submit function would pick that up although I've never tried it.

Mind Socket · Post by **Mind Socket** » 18 March 05 4:47 pm

I'm not sure how this is different to any other common numbering system, the number just reads as is. It would be perfectly valid to leave off leading zeros before the decimal place, and trailing zeros after.

05.430, 5.43, 00005.43 and 5.430000 are all equivalent

20.001 can not be reduced

Maybe I'm missing the point here, but I don't think the system is doing anything to confuse users nor obscure values. If I'm barking up the wrong tree, let me know.

- R

Mind Socket · Post by **Mind Socket** » 18 March 05 4:50 pm

Ok, I think I understand now...

The bit after the degrees, eg 5.261' is a single number. The "dot" is a decimal place. That is, there can't possibly be a number between the 5 and the "dot".

- R

Scout · Post by **Scout** » 19 March 05 6:41 am

Mind Socket wrote:05.430, 5.43, 00005.43 and 5.430000 are all equivalent

Yes, but not everyone knows that. If a user wants to enter 5, and a GPS receiver has two places to enter numbers from 00 to 59, the user has to decide whether he should enter 05 or 50, and some will get it wrong.

Displaying the leading zeros on Web pages, even though technically unnecessary, is easy for the Webmaster to do and might just save a mistake or two in the field.

rediguana · Post by **rediguana** » 24 March 05 12:14 pm

Whilst not essential or compulsory, padding with a leading zero does remove any ambiguity and removes almost any wiggle room for error etc.

Otherwise you'd want to start removing the trailing zeros as well, as they aren't important. But given that the formats used for geocaching are [N|S]dd mm.mmm [E|W]ddd mm.mmm, it would remove almost all uncertainty in where the digits go.

So not essential, but one of those little improvements that could make things easier for everyone.

Cheers Gav

Mind Socket · Post by **Mind Socket** » 24 March 05 4:19 pm

Fixed!

- Rog

rediguana · Post by **rediguana** » 24 March 05 6:44 pm

Nice