Numeric constants may appear in a variety of formats. A minus sign may appear before a number to indicate that it is negative. No sign in front of the number means that it is positive (a plus sign is not allowed in front of a number). One optional decimal point may appear in a numeric constant. In addition, a numeric constant may be written in scientific notation by placing the letter "e" or "E" after the number followed by the number to use for the power of 10. For example, 1.23E3 is the same as 1230.0 and 1.23E-3 is the same as 0.00123.
Some examples of numeric constants are:
• 5 23986956
• 44.0 7789.9871
• 23.5e5 -2.34e-5
• 45E-8 0.005E9