When using double.Parse, it seems to like to string away any trailing (insignificant) zeros from the string that I'm converting. I would like double.Parse to keep to places after the decimal. For example, here is some code:
tobereturned.MouseSensitivty = double.Parse(String.Format("{0:#.##}", tempstring[1]));
Debug.WriteLine("Converted " + String.Format("{0:#.##}", tempstring[1]) + " to " + tobereturned.MouseSensitivty);
The Debugger then writes
Converted 4.00 to 4
So it seems like double.Parse is doing something fishy here.
P.S. MouseSensitivity is also of the type double, so I can't do any string operations on it.
Your question is meaningless. Doubles don't have "places after the decimal" in the first place. They don't store anything that looks remotely like a "decimal representation of a number" internally. In fact, they don't store anything internally that even looks like recognizable text.
It reports 4 because 4.00 is exactly equal to 4. It is displaying the number "exactly four with no fractional part" as text according to its default rules for converting numbers to text.
Please read this. Yes, it is long, and difficult, but it is simply not possible to use floating-point numeric types properly without a real understanding of this material - and it doesn't matter what language you're using, either.
The double data type is simply a number; it doesn't keep track of the string that was parsed to create the value. Its string representation only comes into play when .ToString() is called.
If you know you always want two places after the decimal you can right-fill with zeros.
it is not the job of the double type to keep track of your desired display format.
Double does not store redundant zeros. In your view or presentation layer, you might want to format it to show you want it to appear, e.g., String.Format("{0:#.##}", doubleVariable)
Related
In a calculator application, I have to convert the string the user inputs to a data type, but I don't know if it is a float, integer, double, etc, and I wrote:
value += double.Parse(result.Text);
Whenever I write something like 12.25, it appears System.FormatException. However, if I write 2 or 89, the program runs without any problem.
I really don't know what to do, I've tried changing the double to float but the same error appears.
The safer way is to use TryParse
double.TryParse(string, out double)
Also keep in mind that parsing is culture related. To make sure your decimal separator is ., not , you could do something like this:
double.Parse(result.Text, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)
TryParse is a good way, but is there a particular reason to not use Convert?
value += Convert.ToDouble(result.Text);
Of course, you could get into trouble if you're in places like Europe, where comma is used in place of a decimal point, in which case you need to allow for culture.
I am getting data into a text field and I need to display it as a percentage. Is there a function to perform this?
Ex: in my column I have "0.5", "0.1","0.2","0.25" etc., which needs to be displayed as
50%,10%,20%,25% etc., What is the best way to do it?
You should do this in two phases:
Parse the text as a number so you've got the value as your "real" type. (As a general rule, parse from text as early as you can, and format to a string as late as you can... operations between the two will be a lot simpler using the natural type.)
Format the number as a percentage using the standard numeric format string for percentage
So:
decimal percentage = decimal.Parse(input);
string output = percentage.ToString("p0");
Notes:
You should consider both input and output culture; are you always expecting to use "." as the decimal separator, for example?
Use decimal rather than double to exactly represent the value in the text (for example, the text could have "0.1" but double can't hold a value of exactly 0.1)
You can add things like desired precision to the formatting; see the linked docs for details; the example gives just an integer percentage, for example
Easiest would be to parse it (must be a double) then convert it back to a string, formatting it as a percentage.
var percentageString = double.Parse(doubleString).ToString("p1");
Now, some of you hoity-toity types may say that decimal is the correct type to use in this case.
Well, yes, if you need an additional 12-13 digits of precision.
However, most of us real folk (and I'm all about keeping it real) are fine with double's 15-16 digits of precision.
The real choice is whether or not your code is using doubles or decimals in the first place. If you are using doubles in your code, just stick with doubles. If decimals, stick to decimals. What you definitely do want to avoid is having to convert between the two any more than is absolutely necessary, as there be dragons. And unexpected runtime bugs that can corrupt your data. But mostly dragons.
Let's say we have the following simple code
string number = "93389.429999999993";
double numberAsDouble = Convert.ToDouble(number);
Console.WriteLine(numberAsDouble);
after that conversion numberAsDouble variable has the value 93389.43. What can i do to make this variable keep the full number as is without rounding it? I have found that Convert.ToDecimal does not behave the same way but i need to have the value as double.
-------------------small update---------------------
putting a breakpoint in line 2 of the above code shows that the numberAsDouble variable has the rounded value 93389.43 before displayed in the console.
93389.429999999993 cannot be represented exactly as a 64-bit floating point number. A double can only hold 15 or 16 digits, while you have 17 digits. If you need that level of precision use a decimal instead.
(I know you say you need it as a double, but if you could explain why, there may be alternate solutions)
This is expected behavior.
A double can't represent every number exactly. This has nothing to do with the string conversion.
You can check it yourself:
Console.WriteLine(93389.429999999993);
This will print 93389.43.
The following also shows this:
Console.WriteLine(93389.429999999993 == 93389.43);
This prints True.
Keep in mind that there are two conversions going on here. First you're converting the string to a double, and then you're converting that double back into a string to display it.
You also need to consider that a double doesn't have infinite precision; depending on the string, some data may be lost due to the fact that a double doesn't have the capacity to store it.
When converting to a double it's not going to "round" any more than it has to. It will create the double that is closest to the number provided, given the capabilities of a double. When converting that double to a string it's much more likely that some information isn't kept.
See the following (in particular the first part of Michael Borgwardt's answer):
decimal vs double! - Which one should I use and when?
A double will not always keep the precision depending on the number you are trying to convert
If you need to be precise you will need to use decimal
This is a limit on the precision that a double can store. You can see this yourself by trying to convert 3389.429999999993 instead.
The double type has a finite precision of 64 bits, so a rounding error occurs when the real number is stored in the numberAsDouble variable.
A solution that would work for your example is to use the decimal type instead, which has 128 bit precision. However, the same problem arises with a smaller difference.
For arbitrary large numbers, the System.Numerics.BigInteger object from the .NET Framework 4.0 supports arbitrary precision for integers. However you will need a 3rd party library to use arbitrary large real numbers.
You could truncate the decimal places to the amount of digits you need, not exceeding double precision.
For instance, this will truncate to 5 decimal places, getting 93389.42999. Just replace 100000 for the needed value
string number = "93389.429999999993";
decimal numberAsDecimal = Convert.ToDecimal(number);
var numberAsDouble = ((double)((long)(numberAsDecimal * 100000.0m))) / 100000.0;
I wish to extract double value completely when I am debugging an application, so that I can use it to construct a test case to feed into my geometry algorithm.
How to extract the double value out-- down to very last decimal places allowed by the double datatypes in C#-- and output it in either debugger windows, or using Console.WriteLine command?
Edit: My problem is that the algorithm that takes the double value as input will only fail if I insist of input the whole double value, right down to the very last digit. And since I want to reproduce it in a test case, that's why I would need such a full representation of the double value.
I have a DoubleConverter class which does exactly what you want, by the sounds of it. Use it like this:
string text = DoubleConverter.ToExactString(doubleValue);
You need to make sure you understand that just because the output has a large number of digits, that doesn't mean it has that much precision. You may want to read my article on binary floating point in .NET for more information - or you may be aware of all of this to start with, of course.
Note that if you only want a string value which can be round-tripped, you don't need any extra code - just use the "r" format specifier:
string text = doubleValue.ToString("r");
I agree with Jackson Pope's general approach of using tolerance in equality comparisons for tests, but I do find it useful sometimes to see the exact value represented by a double. It can make it easier to understand why a particular calculation has come out one way or another.
Instead of trying to output a binary number as a decimal number to a very large number of decimal places and do an exact comparison, instead do a comparison with an epsilon value that is your acceptable error and set epsilon to be very small. E.g.
double epsilon = Math.Abs(actual - expected);
Assert.That(epsilon, Is.LessThan(0.000000000001);
I made a query to SQL Server to get some data via a Stored Procedure, the returned value was this:
10219150
Then, in an assembly (I don't have the source code of that assembly, I reflected the file to view the code) someone had written this:
Amount = Convert.ToSingle(10219150); //the value from the stored procedure
So, when I invoke that method which does the final conversion, it returns this value:
1.021315E+7
How is that possible? Why does the Convert.ToSingle add extra decimal positions? I don't understand.
Is there a way that i can reverse that conversion on my code when I invoke that method of the assembly? I can't rewrite that assembly file as it's too big, and, as I mentioned earlier, I don't have the source code to fix the conversion.
From this: 1.021315E+7 To this: 10219150 again (restore the correct value without that conversion)
Hope I made myself clear.
Thanks in advance.
The conversion to single isn't adding extra precision.
10219150 is 1.021315E+7 (which is just another way of writing 1.021315 * 107).
The method you are using to print out the value is just using scientific notation to display the number.
If you are printing the number then you need to set the formatting options.
float amount = Convert.ToSingle("10219150");
string toPrint = string.Format("{0:N}", amount);
Will print the number as:
"10,219,150.00"
To get no decimal places use "{0:N0}" as the format string.
You have two issues. One is easily solved, and the other may be more difficult or impossible.
As ChrisF stated, 1.021315E+7 is simply another way of writing 10219150. (The E+7 part in Scientific Notation means to shift the decimal point 7 places to the right.) When you format your single precision value, you can use
fvalue.ToString("f0");
to display as an integer, rather than in Scientific Notation.
The bigger problem, unfortunately, is that a single precision float can only hold 7 significant digits, and in your example you are storing 8. Therefore, the last digit may be rounded. (Since it happens to be 0 in your case, the rounding might not have been noticed.)
If that loss of precision is critical, you would likely need to fetch the value from the database as a long, or as a double-precision value (depending on the type of data returned.) Each of these types can hold more significant digits.
When the value is converted to Single, it's rounded as it contains more significant digits that can fit in a Single. If you convert 10213153 to Single you also end up with 1.021315E+7 i.e. 10213150.
As the code uses a Single to store the amount, there is nothing that you can do to make it handle the current value correctly. The amount simply can not be represented correctly as a Single.
You either have to use lower values, or change the code.