CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++while-loopdigitscounting
E.O.
E.O.

Reputation: 814

Counting digits using while loop

I was recently making a program which needed to check the number of digits in a number inputted by the user. As a result I made the following code:

int x;    
cout << "Enter a number: ";
cin >> x;
x /= 10;
while(x > 0)
{
  count++;
  x = x/10;
}

From what I can tell (even with my limited experience) is that it seems crude and rather unelegant.

Does anyone have an idea on how to improve this code (while not using an inbuilt c++ function)?

Upvotes: 7

Views: 27348

Answers (7)

reza
reza

Reputation: 1

#include<iostream>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
int count=0;
    double x;
    cout << "Enter a number: ";
    cin >> x;
    x /= 10;
    while(x > 1)
    {
      count++;
      x = x/10;
    }
    cout<<count+1;
}

Upvotes: 0

dascandy
dascandy

Reputation: 7292

Given a very pipelined cpu with conditional moves, this example may be quicker:

if (x > 100000000) { x /= 100000000; count += 8; }
if (x > 10000) { x /= 10000; count += 4; }
if (x > 100) { x /= 100; count += 2; }
if (x > 10) { x /= 10; count += 1; }

as it is fully unrolled. A good compiler may also unroll the while loop to a maximum of 10 iterations though.

Upvotes: 1

Zan Lynx
Zan Lynx

Reputation: 54325

In your particular example you could read the number as a string and count the number of characters.

But for the general case, you can do it your way or you can use a base-10 logarithm.

Here is the logarithm example:

#include <iostream>
#include <cmath>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
    double n;
    cout << "Enter a number: ";
    cin >> n;

    cout << "Log 10 is " << log10(n) << endl;
    cout << "Digits are " << ceil(log10(fabs(n)+1)) << endl;
    return 0;
}

Upvotes: 12

David Hammen
David Hammen

Reputation: 33116

int count = (x == 0) ? 1 : (int)(std::log10(std::abs((double)(x)))))) + 1;

Upvotes: 5

Dan
Dan

Reputation: 12665

If x is an integer, and by "built in function" you aren't excluding logarithms, then you could do

double doub_x=double(x);
double digits=log(abs(doub_x))/log(10.0);
int digits= int(num_digits);

Upvotes: 1

Lyke
Lyke

Reputation: 4705

Bar the suggestions of reading the number as a string, your current method of counting the number of significant decimal digits is fine. You could make it shorter, but this could arguably be less clear (extra set of parenthesis added to keep gcc from issuing warnings):

while((x = x/10))
  count++;

Upvotes: -1

Oliver Charlesworth
Oliver Charlesworth

Reputation: 272467

You could read the user input as a string, and then count the characters? (After sanitising and trimming, etc.)

Alternatively, you could get a library to do the hard work for you; convert the value back to a string, and then count the characters:

cin >> x;
stringstream ss;
ss << x;
int len = ss.str().length();

Upvotes: 2

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