Format a double into an existing character array.

This is hard to do exactly right... The JDK code does stuff with rational arithmetic and so forth. We use a much simpler algorithm which may give an answer off in the lowest order bit. Since this is pure Java, it should still be consistent from machine to machine.

Recall that the binary representation of the double is of the form d = 0.bbbbbbbb x 2n where there are up to 53 binary digits in the binary fraction (including the assumed leading 1 bit for normalized numbers). We find a value m such that 10m d is between 253 and >263. This product will be exactly convertible to a long with no loss of precision. Getting the decimal representation for that is trivial (see formatLong). This is a decimal mantissa and we have an exponent (-m). All we have to do is manipulate the decimal point to where we want to see it. Errors can arise due to roundoff in the scaling multiplication, but should be no more than a single bit.


Namespace: nom.tam.util
Assembly: CSharpFITS_v1.1 (in CSharpFITS_v1.1.dll)

Syntax

Visual Basic (Declaration)
Public Function format( _ 
   ByVal val As Double,  _ 
   ByVal buf As Byte(),  _ 
   ByVal off As Integer,  _ 
   ByVal len As Integer _ 
) As Integer
C#
public int format(
   double val,
   byte[] buf,
   int off,
   int len
)
C++
public:
 int format(
   double val,
   array<char>^ buf,
   int off,
   int len
) sealed 
J#
public int format(
   double val,
   byte[] buf,
   int off,
   int len
)
JScript
public  function format(
   val : double,
   buf : Byte[],
   off : int,
   len : int
) : int

Parameters

val
Double to be formatted
buf
Buffer in which result is to be stored
off
Offset within buffer
len
Maximum length of integer

Return Value

offset of next unused character in input buffer.

See Also