ECVT(3)

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().

NOTES
These functions are obsolete. Instead, sprintf(3) is recommended. Linux libc4 and libc5 specified the type of ndigits as size_t. Not all locales use a point as the radix character ("decimal point").

SEE ALSO
ecvt_r(3), gcvt(3), qecvt(3), setlocale(3), sprintf(3)

COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.17 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/.