Radio Shack TRS-80 PC-3 Owner's Manual page 217

Notice that the last statement produced an error because 5 positions (4 digits and a sign space) were required, but only 4 were
provided in the mask.
Specifying a Decimal Point
A decimal point character, '.', may be included in a numeric mask to indicate the desired location of the decimal point. If the
mask provides fewer significant decimal digits than are required for the value to be displayed, the remaining positions to the right
will be filled with zeros. If there are more significant decimal digits in the value than in the mask, the extra digits will be truncated
(not rounded):
Statement
10: USING
"####.##"
20:
PRINT
25
30: PR INT -350.5
40: PR INT 2.547
Display
2
5.00
-350.50
2.54
Specifying Scientific Notation
A
"A"
character may be included in the mask to indicate that the number is to be displayed in scientific notation. The
'#'
and
'. ' characters are used in the mask to specify the format of the "characteristic" portion of the number, i.e., the part which is
displayed to the left of the IE. Two
'#'
characters should always be used to the left of the decimal point to provide for the sign
220