Re: Converting from scientific to integer/decimal

[Barbara Morris <bmorris@xxxxxxxxxx>]

"M. Lazarus" wrote:
> 
> Bob,
> 
>   I'm not at the /400 right now, but would this work (assuming atof was
> prototyped properly)?
> 
>   IntValue = AtoF( '123456+E4' )
> 

It would be safer to use 
 
   eval(h) IntValue = AtoF(string)

As a rule of thumb, always use (H) when assigning from float to
non-float.

The mantissa parts of the float values for 123456, 1.23456, .000123456,
1234560000 etc. are all the same, either 1.23456, or maybe .123456, I
forget which.  Either way, there are values after the decimal point even
though the actual number may have no decimal places.  Not all decimal
fractions can be stored exactly in floating point, because floating
point is stored in binary format.

It's possible for a number like say 12345 to be stored as
.1234499999999e5.  If you use EVAL to assign this to an integer value,
you would get 12344.  Using EVAL(H) would give you 12345.  (12345 is
just a made up example - I wish I had a real example to show that using
EVAL without half-adjust might not give the right result sometimes.)