CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rprintf
Stephen K
Stephen K

Reputation: 737

sprintf failing with numeric over 9 digits in length

This is pretty straight forward:

> sprintf("%013d",150025901)
[1] "0000150025901"
> sprintf("%013d",8150025901)
Error in sprintf("%013d", 8150025901) : 
  invalid format '%013d'; use format %f, %e, %g or %a for numeric objects

ultimately I need to use this on a 12 digit number, but I just removed digits until sprintf would stop returning that error.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1428

Answers (1)

Frank
Frank

Reputation: 574

8150025901 is too big for an integer, which maxes out at 2147483647

You can use sprintf with a double instead of an int and get the desired results. The exact code for this would be:

sprintf("%013.000f",8150025901)

However, it is important to note that--while R will not give you an explicit error or warning--if you try to do this with numbers more than ~15 digits, you can get unpredictable results.

This is because doubles in R have 53-bit precision, and 10^15 < 2^53 < 10^16. That means the rounding error in the number you are converting is greater than one for 16-digits, so (for example) sprintf("%013.000f",10^16) and sprintf("%013.000f",10^16+1) both produce "10000000000000000" due to rounding

Upvotes: 6

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