How can I count decimal digits? - ios

Question

I have to count how many decimal digits are there in a double in Xcode 5. I know that I must convert my double in a NSString, but can you explain me how could I exactly do? Thanks

Answer 1

A significant problem is that a double has a fractional part which has no defined length. If you know you want, say, 3 fractional digits, you could do:
[[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%1.3f", theDoubleNumber] length]
There are more elegant ways, using modulo arithmetic or logarithms, but how elegant do you want to be?

Answer 2

A good method could be to take your double value and, for each iteration, increment a counter, multiply your value by ten, and constantly check if the left decimal part is really near from zero.
This could be a solution (referring to a previous code made by Graham Perks):
int countDigits(double num) {
int rv = 0;
const double insignificantDigit = 8;
double intpart, fracpart;
fracpart = modf(num, &intpart);
while ((fabs(fracpart) > 0.000000001f) && (rv < insignificantDigit))
{
num *= 10;
fracpart = modf(num, &intpart);
rv++;
}
return rv;
}

Answer 3

You could wrap the double in an instance of NSNumber and get an NSString representation from the NSNumber instance. From there, calculating the number of digits after the decimal could be done.
One possible way would be to implement a method that takes a double as an argument and returns an integer that represents the number of decimal places -
- (NSUInteger)decimalPlacesForDouble:(double)number {
// wrap double value in an instance of NSNumber
NSNumber *num = [NSNumber numberWithDouble:number];
// next make it a string
NSString *resultString = [num stringValue];
NSLog(#"result string is %#",resultString);
// scan to find how many chars we're not interested in
NSScanner *theScanner = [NSScanner scannerWithString:resultString];
NSString *decimalPoint = #".";
NSString *unwanted = nil;
[theScanner scanUpToString:decimalPoint intoString:&unwanted];
NSLog(#"unwanted is %#", unwanted);
// the number of decimals will be string length - unwanted length - 1
NSUInteger numDecimalPlaces = (([resultString length] - [unwanted length]) > 0) ? [resultString length] - [unwanted length] - 1 : 0;
return numDecimalPlaces;
}
Test the method with some code like this -
// test by changing double value here...
double testDouble = 1876.9999999999;
NSLog(#"number of decimals is %lu", (unsigned long)[self decimalPlacesForDouble:testDouble]);
results -
result string is 1876.9999999999
unwanted is 1876
number of decimals is 10
Depending on the value of the double, NSNumber may do some 'rounding trickery' so this method may or may not suit your requirements. It should be tested first with an approximate range of values that your implementation expects to determine if this approach is appropriate.