In X12.6 section 3.5.1.2 Decimal Numbers - the following instruction is presented "Leading zeros shall be suppressed unless necessary to satisfy a minimum length requirement."
Lets consider a case where there is an R element with min-length 1.
The value to be expressed in the document is 1 / 10
1. Should the value written to the edi document be ".1" or "0.1"?
2. Does the value ".1" in an edi document have length 1 or length 2?
3. Does the value "0.1" in an edi document have length 1 or length 2?
4. Is "0.1" actually technically not valid because the spec says leading 0s should be suppressed?
Further - I would like to understand how lengths relate to exponents. The number 1000 can be written in EDI as 1E3 or 1000.
5. Would this same value have different lengths depending how its written (2 and 4 respectively)?"
Implementing a system to verify than a certain edi x12 document is valid as per the spec. Understanding how numbers can be represented and how to correctly calculate the lengths of those numbers is required to do this correctly.
The question has several questions and they have been numbered. These are the answers:
1. .1
2. 1
3. 1
4. Correct, suppress the leading zero.
5. The lengths concern the values in the data stream, not how they may be transformed. So, 1000 is 4 characters and 1E3 is two characters.