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Date: Tue, 4 Jul 1995 10:22:04 +0800 (WST)
From: Peter Wemm <peter@haywire.DIALix.COM>
To: David Greenman <davidg@Root.COM>
cc: current@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: comments on my favourite hack to traceroute? 
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On Mon, 3 Jul 1995, David Greenman wrote:
> 
> >This is my favourite hack to traceroute to rationalize the number of
> >digits printed in the rtt stats..  
> >The standard one prints three numbers after the decimal point, and when 
> >you're up in the thousands of milliseconds (try going from australia to 
> >the depths of europe some time.. :-), then the numbers are a bit of 
> >overkill.  It makes the display look very messy.
> >
> >I made a change to cause traceroute to only show a limited number of 
> >significant digits..
> 
>    That's similar to what the code did originally. I changed it because it
> incorrectly represents the precision and I find it a lot more difficult to
> read with varying numbers of decimal digits. I'm personally more interested
> in accuracy than I am in formatting. Besides, IMO, the solution to lines being
> too long has always been to use a larger window. :-)

Yes, you're right..  The original code was broken - it would trim off 
trailing zeros, even if they were significant.

The code I suggested would still print "1.000 ms", so it'd be easy to read
while testing RTT's on ethernets and local-ish links.  But "3000.001 ms"
is ridiculous...  When you're doing a traceroute over a links like that,
you're hardly worried about +/- 100 ms..  I still think my way is better..
(of course.. :-)

Also, bear in mind that it isn't always practical to resize the window on 
a physical terminal...

> -DG
> 

Cheers,
-Peter