File: gawk.info,  Node: Strtonum Function,  Next: Assert Function,  Up: General Functions

10.2.1 Converting Strings to Numbers
------------------------------------

The 'strtonum()' function (*note String Functions::) is a 'gawk'
extension.  The following function provides an implementation for other
versions of 'awk':

     # mystrtonum --- convert string to number

     function mystrtonum(str,        ret, n, i, k, c)
     {
         if (str ~ /^0[0-7]*$/) {
             # octal
             n = length(str)
             ret = 0
             for (i = 1; i <= n; i++) {
                 c = substr(str, i, 1)
                 # index() returns 0 if c not in string,
                 # includes c == "0"
                 k = index("1234567", c)

                 ret = ret * 8 + k
             }
         } else if (str ~ /^0[xX][[:xdigit:]]+$/) {
             # hexadecimal
             str = substr(str, 3)    # lop off leading 0x
             n = length(str)
             ret = 0
             for (i = 1; i <= n; i++) {
                 c = substr(str, i, 1)
                 c = tolower(c)
                 # index() returns 0 if c not in string,
                 # includes c == "0"
                 k = index("123456789abcdef", c)

                 ret = ret * 16 + k
             }
         } else if (str ~ \
       /^[-+]?([0-9]+([.][0-9]*([Ee][0-9]+)?)?|([.][0-9]+([Ee][-+]?[0-9]+)?))$/) {
             # decimal number, possibly floating point
             ret = str + 0
         } else
             ret = "NOT-A-NUMBER"

         return ret
     }

     # BEGIN {     # gawk test harness
     #     a[1] = "25"
     #     a[2] = ".31"
     #     a[3] = "0123"
     #     a[4] = "0xdeadBEEF"
     #     a[5] = "123.45"
     #     a[6] = "1.e3"
     #     a[7] = "1.32"
     #     a[8] = "1.32E2"
     #
     #     for (i = 1; i in a; i++)
     #         print a[i], strtonum(a[i]), mystrtonum(a[i])
     # }

   The function first looks for C-style octal numbers (base 8).  If the
input string matches a regular expression describing octal numbers, then
'mystrtonum()' loops through each character in the string.  It sets 'k'
to the index in '"1234567"' of the current octal digit.  The return
value will either be the same number as the digit, or zero if the
character is not there, which will be true for a '0'.  This is safe,
because the regexp test in the 'if' ensures that only octal values are
converted.

   Similar logic applies to the code that checks for and converts a
hexadecimal value, which starts with '0x' or '0X'.  The use of
'tolower()' simplifies the computation for finding the correct numeric
value for each hexadecimal digit.

   Finally, if the string matches the (rather complicated) regexp for a
regular decimal integer or floating-point number, the computation 'ret =
str + 0' lets 'awk' convert the value to a number.

   A commented-out test program is included, so that the function can be
tested with 'gawk' and the results compared to the built-in 'strtonum()'
function.