Reliable way of getting the exact decimals from any number - lua

Question

I'm having problem returning spesific amount of decimal numbers from this function, i would like it to get that info from "dec" argument, but i'm stuck with this right now.
Edit: Made it work with the edited version bellow but isn't there a better way?
local function remove_decimal(t, dec)
if type(dec) == "number" then
for key, num in pairs(type(t) == "table" and t or {}) do
if type(num) == "number" then
local num_to_string = tostring(num)
local mod, d = math.modf(num)
-- find only decimal numbers
local num_dec = num_to_string:sub(#tostring(mod) + (mod == 0 and num < 0 and 3 or 2))
if dec <= #num_dec then
-- return amount of deciamls in the num by dec
local r = d < 0 and "-0." or "0."
local r2 = r .. num_dec:sub(1, dec)
t[key] = mod + tonumber(r2)
end
end
end
end
return t
end
By passing the function bellow i want a result like this:
result[1] > 0.12
result[2] > -0.12
result[3] > 123.45
result[4] > -1.23
local result = remove_decimal({0.123, -0.123, 123.456, -1.234}, 2)
print(result[1])
print(result[2])
print(result[3])
print(result[4])
I tried this but it seems to only work with one integer numbers and if number is 12.34 instead of 1.34 e.g, the decimal place will be removed and become 12.3. Using other methods
local d = dec + (num < 0 and 2 or 1)
local r = tonumber(num_to_string:sub(1, -#num_to_string - d)) or 0

Answer 1

A good approach is to find the position of the decimal point (the dot, .) and then extract a substring starting from the first character to the dot's position plus how many digits you want:
local function truncate(number, dec)
local strnum = tostring(number)
local i, j = string.find(strnum, '%.')
if not i then
return number
end
local strtrn = string.sub(strnum, 1, i+dec)
return tonumber(strtrn)
end
Call it like this:
print(truncate(123.456, 2))
print(truncate(1234567, 2))
123.45
1234567
To bulk-truncate a set of numbers:
local function truncate_all(t, dec)
for key, value in pairs(t) do
t[key] = truncate(t[key], dec)
end
return t
end
Usage:
local result = truncate_all({0.123, -0.123, 123.456, -1.234}, 2)
for key, value in pairs(result) do
print(key, value)
end
1 0.12
2 -0.12
3 123.45
4 -1.23

Answer 2

One could use the function string.format which is similar to the printf functions from C language. If one use the format "%.2f" the resulting string will contain 2 decimals, if one use "%.3f" the resulting string will be contain 3 decimals, etc. The idea is to dynamically create the format "%.XXXf" corresponding to the number of decimal needed by the function. Then call the function string.format with the newly created format string to generate the string "123.XXX". The last step would be to convert back the string to a number with the function tonumber.
Note that if one want the special character % to be preserved when string.format is called, you need to write %%.
function KeepDecimals (Number, DecimalCount)
local FloatFormat = string.format("%%.%df", DecimalCount)
local String = string.format(FloatFormat, Number)
return tonumber(String)
end
The behavior seems close to what the OP is looking for:
for Count = 1, 5 do
print(KeepDecimals(1.123456789, Count))
end
This code should print the following:
1.1
1.12
1.123
1.1235
1.12346
Regarding the initial code, it's quite straight-forward to integrate the provided solution. Note that I renamed the function to keep_decimal because in my understanding, the function will keep the requested number of decimals, and discard the rest.
function keep_decimal (Table, Count)
local NewTable = {}
local NewIndex = 1
for Index = 1, #Table do
NewTable[NewIndex] = KeepDecimal(Table[Index], Count)
NewIndex = NewIndex + 1
end
return NewTable
end
Obviously, the code could be tested easily, simply by copy and pasting into a Lua interpreter.
Result = keep_decimal({0.123, -0.123, 123.456, -1.234}, 2)
for Index = 1, #Result do
print(Result[Index])
end
This should print the following:
0.12
-0.12
123.46
-1.23
Edit due to the clarification of the need of truncate:
function Truncate (Number, Digits)
local Divider = Digits * 10
local TruncatedValue = math.floor(Number * Divider) / Divider
return TruncatedValue
end
On my computer, the code is working as expected:
> Truncate(123.456, 2)
123.45