# Why does scientific notation break the range function?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-does-scientific-notation-break-the-range-function/80014>\
**Category:** New to Julia\
**Created:** [April 25, 2022, 8:46pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-does-scientific-notation-break-the-range-function/80014 "2022-04-25T20:46:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 7

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**Author:** ![chadagreene](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/chadagreene/32/34924_2.png) [@chadagreene](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/chadagreene)\
**Post date:** [April 25, 2022, 9:26pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-does-scientific-notation-break-the-range-function/80014/7 "2022-04-25T21:26:18Z")

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> [@DNF](#):
>
> Unfortunately, there is also a part mentioning a union with `Nothing` , which is pretty confusing.

Yep, and after that there’s 30 lines of Stacktrace garbage that buries the tiny morsel of the error message that could potentially be helpful.

From my perspective as a beginner, cryptic and unhelpful error messages appear to be pretty pervasive in Julia, and it makes it _really_ hard to get started. I don’t know what I’d do without this forum!

But back to the original issue: **Should the `range` function be updated to allow whole numbers for the length definition, even if they’re Floats?**

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