TITLE: What does E mean in 9.0122222900391E-5?
QUESTION [58 upvotes]: I often find this at the bottom of pages.

Page generated in 0.00013899803161621

Sometimes, I come across

Page generated in 9.0122222900391E-5

What does that time mean?
I tried searching Wikipedia for E and maths but found the e mathematical constant. My guess is E stand for Exponential and -5 is the power it is raised to. And the displayed time is a really small number. But that doesn't make sense when compared to the other time in the question. 0.00013899803161621 is bigger than 9.0122222900391E-5.
If it means x times $10^{-5}$, then 9.0122222900391E-5 will be 0.000090122222900391 which is smaller than 0.00013899803161621. What does E stand for?

REPLY [7 votes]: I have always taken the E or e to mean "exponent of 10."  This construction parses in all modern computing languages as an IEEE754 double or single precision number.