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Converting floats to string?

Started by Dark Rain Jun 7, 2002 at 1:50 AM 9 replies 1.5k views

Original Post

Jun 7, 2002 at 1:50 AM

Well seeing how the board search function block words like float and string I have to ask ^_^. There's no ftoa function and I cant seem to figure out how to make it work with a std::string. I'm sure it's a common enough problem that there's a standard function or something for that... right? [edited by - Dark Rain on June 7, 2002 3:07:24 AM]

Fruny

Jun 7, 2002 at 1:58 AM

Ok, listen carefully, here is the 'C++ way' : create a string stream, initialise it with the string containing the number, then read the fload off the stream.

    
#include <string>

#include <sstream>


std::string str = "100.5";
std::stringstream ss( str );
float f;
ss >> f;

Alternatively, if you are not adverse to downloading semi-standard libraries, head towards www.boost.org, and download their library.
They provide the boost/lexical_cast.hpp header which basically automates that operation for you in a C++-style cast. And works both ways :

        
#include <string>

#include <boost/lexical_cast.hpp>


std::string str = "1000.0";
float f = boost::lexical_cast<float>( str );

f = 500.254;
str = boost::lexical_cast<std::string>( f );

Dark Rain

Jun 7, 2002 at 2:06 AM

Thanks a lot, for the help!

EDIT : ummm I there's a small proble, I can only get it to work for string to float, not float to string.

I tried to the obvious way, inverting >> to <<, no dice. Any suggestions?

On another note, I think I might need a new C++ book, I never saw any mentions of string streams in it.

[edited by - Dark Rain on June 7, 2002 3:12:30 AM]

Fruny

Jun 7, 2002 at 2:08 AM

Actually, my first bit of code does the string->float translation.
Float to string would be :

    
std::stringstream ss;
ss << 1000.5;
std::string str = ss.str(); // IIRC, check your doc.

Dark Rain

Jun 7, 2002 at 2:13 AM

Heh, figures, we posted both at the same time ^_^

Fruny

Jun 7, 2002 at 2:18 AM

Note that initialising a stream with a string doesn't link the string to the stream... writing to the stream will not modify the string, you have to read it out of ss.str().

And unfortunately there is no 'clear' method for stringstreams (well there is, but it clears stream flags, not stream contents). So to reset the stream to the empty string, you have to assign it the empty string ( ss = "" );

Finally, you can have istringstream and ostringstream, just like ifstream and ofstream, istream (cin) and ostream (cout, cerr).

Have fun.

Edit: more 'stupid' stream tricks : the whole contents of any stream are stored into its 'read buffer', which you can access via stream::rdbuf().

So, while cout << cin is invalid, cout << cin.rdbuf() is not. And it works with files too (make a copy of a file -- fast and without a visible loop : ifstream ifs( "input" ); ofstream ofs( "output" ); ofs << ifs.rdbuf(); ) Documents [ GDNet | MSDN | STL | OpenGL | Formats | RTFM | Asking Smart Questions ] C++ Stuff [ MinGW | Loki | SDL | Boost. | STLport | FLTK | ACCU Recommended Books ] [edited by - Fruny on June 7, 2002 3:22:15 AM]

Dark Rain

Jun 7, 2002 at 2:28 AM

Thansk for the ss = "" tip, I hadnt realised it was accumulating them in the stream, even thought it should''ve been obvious ^_^.

Fruny

Jun 7, 2002 at 2:33 AM

AndersO

Jun 7, 2002 at 9:58 AM

Whats wrong with:

sprintf(buf,"%f",floatvalue);

Fruny

Jun 7, 2002 at 10:19 AM

quote:
Original post by AndersO
Whats wrong with:

sprintf(buf,"%f",floatvalue);

FrigidHelix

Jun 7, 2002 at 2:25 PM

quote:
Whats wrong with:

sprintf(buf,"%f",floatvalue);

The sprintf way is also less efficient and error prone since it needs to parse the format string to determine the type at runtime. Using the overloaded bitshift operators, the type is determined at compile time, enabling the correct input/output functions to be selected. Furthermore, sprintf cannot be extended for user defined types. Using the way, you can write output routines for your own classes.

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