# Using scientific notation in expressions

**URL:** <https://discuss.hail.is/t/using-scientific-notation-in-expressions/359>\
**Category:** Help \[0.1\]\
**Created:** [November 13, 2017, 10:13am UTC](https://discuss.hail.is/t/using-scientific-notation-in-expressions/359 "2017-11-13T10:13:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Stephane\_Bourgeois](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f04885/32.png) [@Stephane\_Bourgeois](https://discuss.hail.is/u/Stephane_Bourgeois)\
**Post date:** [November 13, 2017, 10:13am UTC](https://discuss.hail.is/t/using-scientific-notation-in-expressions/359/1 "2017-11-13T10:13:37Z")

</div>

Hi,

I’m getting an error when trying to use scientific notation to select p-values, but couldn’t find anything in the docs about it:

> bash: syntax error near unexpected token `‘isnan(va.pheno.logreg1.pval) || va.pheno.logreg1.pval\>5.0e-08’,’

using `'va.pheno.logreg1.pval>0.00000005'` instead works fine, so I know it doesn’t come from my data or expression. Is there a way to use the scientific notation?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tpoterba](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discuss.hail.is/tpoterba/32/61_2.png) [@tpoterba](https://discuss.hail.is/u/tpoterba)\
**Post date:** [November 13, 2017, 2:46pm UTC](https://discuss.hail.is/t/using-scientific-notation-in-expressions/359/2 "2017-11-13T14:46:54Z")

</div>

Ah, it looks like our expr parser doesn’t support scientific notation. This is probably something we won’t fix in 0.1. you probably can do that by going though a string first:

```auto
va.pheno1.logreg.pval > "5e-8".toDouble()

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Stephane\_Bourgeois](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f04885/32.png) [@Stephane\_Bourgeois](https://discuss.hail.is/u/Stephane_Bourgeois)\
**Post date:** [November 13, 2017, 4:24pm UTC](https://discuss.hail.is/t/using-scientific-notation-in-expressions/359/3 "2017-11-13T16:24:00Z")

</div>

No worries, str.toDouble() will do just fine for now. Thanks 🙂