CE is Clear Entry. If you want to hit 2 x 4, but accidentally press 2 x 44, you can press the CE button before pressing = to clear the 44 but not the "2 x" part.
C will clear all of it so you can start over at the beginning.
Pressing CE twice may or may not clear entries in reverse order, depending on you calculator model.
Unless it's Dark Souls 2 wherein you mash a couple buttons after being knocked down or rolling and manage to queue up your binoculars perfectly. This, in turn, allows you to get a really splendid look at your enemy's grimacing face as he shoves a rather vicious and often seriously pointy metal object up your ass. All the while you're frantically trying to roll away and accidentally toss back a flask. This manages to save you from an untimely demise until you notice that you backed up a little too much and that dude waiting to ambush took one last drag from his cigarette, flicked it away, and proceeded to club your head like he was Babe Ruth after a particularly hearty breakfast.
Then on the way back to your souls some asshole named "Forsworn" gets in your way. God only knows what his problem is.
Oh, yeah I own that calculator. I bought it from amazon, it was an extremely cheap Scientific calculator with a gimmicky writing pad that tricked me into buying it.
Problem is on some calculators C is clear all and CE is clear entry, on some C is clear entry and AC is clear all, and some have a C/AC or CE/C button where it’s press once to clear entry and press twice to clear all.
So it’s safest to mash unless you really know your calculator, because the industry can’t get its shit together, and that’s the sole reason it died (I’m assuming.)
Why didn't they just make one Clear and make another Backspace? The concept of erasing the last character had been in typewriters for a while by then, and this is far more obvious. Maybe erasing a single digit in earlier software/hardware was much harder than just clearing it all?
but we got digital typewriters that still used paper and those added the obvious functions like backspace and actual text editing tools, why didn't calculators progress the same?
Thanks I was looking at the answer and thinking it didn't fit my memory. i'm sure most of mine were ACs.
TBF with things like VPAM coming in the late 90s, you did have backspace and all sorts of stuff like that.
I still remember doing linear regression in a stats exam on i think a casio fx-115W something like that . Excellent calculator - but just no, it was time for some things to be on a real computer.
And it all depends on the calculator. The one right next to me only has a CE button and it acts as a C button. So not even the people making them know what they do sometimes.