ECVT

Section: Linux Programmer's Manual (3)
Updated: 2009-03-15
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NAME

ecvt, fcvt - convert a floating-point number to a string

SYNOPSIS

#include <stdlib.h>

char *ecvt(double number, int ndigits, int *decpt, int *sign);

char *fcvt(double number, int ndigits, int *decpt, int *sign);

Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

ecvt(), fcvt(): _SVID_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE >= 500

DESCRIPTION

The ecvt() function converts number to a null-terminated string of ndigits digits (where ndigits is reduced to a system-specific limit determined by the precision of a double), and returns a pointer to the string. The high-order digit is non-zero, unless number is zero. The low order digit is rounded. The string itself does not contain a decimal point; however, the position of the decimal point relative to the start of the string is stored in *decpt. A negative value for *decpt means that the decimal point is to the left of the start of the string. If the sign of number is negative, *sign is set to a non-zero value, otherwise it is set to 0. If number is zero, it is unspecified whether *decpt is 0 or 1.

The fcvt() function is identical to ecvt(), except that ndigits specifies the number of digits after the decimal point.

RETURN VALUE

Both the ecvt() and fcvt() functions return a pointer to a static string containing the ASCII representation of number. The static string is overwritten by each call to ecvt() or fcvt().

CONFORMING TO

SVr2; marked as LEGACY in POSIX.1-2001. POSIX.1-2008 removes the specifications of ecvt() and fcvt(), recommending the use of sprintf(3) instead (though snprintf(3) may be preferable).

NOTES

Linux libc4 and libc5 specified the type of ndigits as size_t. Not all locales use a point as the radix character ("decimal point").

COLOPHON

This page is part of release 3.22 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.