&gt; How to calculate this “shortest unambiguous string” efficiently is more tricky than you might expect. In fact the best known algorithm for calculating it was published only in 2010, in the paper Printing Floating-Point Numbers Quickly and Accurately with Integers<p>That&#x27;s no longer the state-of-the-art. The latest approach - and possibly the end of the road for research her - is Andrysco et al.: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cseweb.ucsd.edu&#x2F;~lerner&#x2F;papers&#x2F;fp-printing-popl16.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cseweb.ucsd.edu&#x2F;~lerner&#x2F;papers&#x2F;fp-printing-popl16.pdf</a><p>It&#x27;s been on the front page previously: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10915182" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10915182</a>