Double to string conversion without scientific not

Question

How to convert a double into a floating-point string representation without scientific notation in the .NET Framework?

"Small" samples (effective numbers may be of any size, such as 1.5E200 or 1e-200) :

3248971234698200000000000000000000000000000000
0.00000000000000000000000000000000000023897356978234562

None of the standard number formats are like this, and a custom format also doesn't seem to allow having an open number of digits after the decimal separator.

This is not a duplicate of How to convert double to string without the power to 10 representation (E-05) because the answers given there do not solve the issue at hand. The accepted solution in this question was to use a fixed point (such as 20 digits), which is not what I want. A fixed point formatting and trimming the redundant 0 doesn't solve the issue either because the max width for fixed width is 99 characters.

Note: the solution has to deal correctly with custom number formats (e.g. other decimal separator, depending on culture information).

Edit: The question is really only about displaing aforementioned numbers. I'm aware of how floating point numbers work and what numbers can be used and computed with them.

Answer 1

try this one:

public static string DoubleToFullString(double value, 
                                        NumberFormatInfo formatInfo)
{
    string[] valueExpSplit;
    string result, decimalSeparator;
    int indexOfDecimalSeparator, exp;

    valueExpSplit = value.ToString("r", formatInfo)
                         .ToUpper()
                         .Split(new char[] { 'E' });

    if (valueExpSplit.Length > 1)
    {
        result = valueExpSplit[0];
        exp = int.Parse(valueExpSplit[1]);
        decimalSeparator = formatInfo.NumberDecimalSeparator;

        if ((indexOfDecimalSeparator 
             = valueExpSplit[0].IndexOf(decimalSeparator)) > -1)
        {
            exp -= (result.Length - indexOfDecimalSeparator - 1);
            result = result.Replace(decimalSeparator, "");
        }

        if (exp >= 0) result += new string('0', Math.Abs(exp));
        else
        {
            exp = Math.Abs(exp);
            if (exp >= result.Length)
            {
                result = "0." + new string('0', exp - result.Length) 
                             + result;
            }
            else
            {
                result = result.Insert(result.Length - exp, decimalSeparator);
            }
        }
    }
    else result = valueExpSplit[0];

    return result;
}

Answer 2

The obligatory Logarithm-based solution. Note that this solution, because it involves doing math, may reduce the accuracy of your number a little bit. Not heavily tested.

private static string DoubleToLongString(double x)
{
    int shift = (int)Math.Log10(x);
    if (Math.Abs(shift) <= 2)
    {
        return x.ToString();
    }

    if (shift < 0)
    {
        double y = x * Math.Pow(10, -shift);
        return "0.".PadRight(-shift + 2, '0') + y.ToString().Substring(2);
    }
    else
    {
        double y = x * Math.Pow(10, 2 - shift);
        return y + "".PadRight(shift - 2, '0');
    }
}

Edit: If the decimal point crosses non-zero part of the number, this algorithm will fail miserably. I tried for simple and went too far.

Answer 3

I have just improvised on the code above to make it work for negative exponential values.

using System;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading;

namespace ConvertNumbersInScientificNotationToPlainNumbers
{
    class Program
    {
        private static string ToLongString(double input)
        {
            string str = input.ToString(System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

            // if string representation was collapsed from scientific notation, just return it:
            if (!str.Contains("E")) return str;

            var positive = true;
            if (input < 0)
            {
                positive = false;
            }

            string sep = Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.NumberFormat.NumberDecimalSeparator;
            char decSeparator = sep.ToCharArray()[0];

            string[] exponentParts = str.Split('E');
            string[] decimalParts = exponentParts[0].Split(decSeparator);

            // fix missing decimal point:
            if (decimalParts.Length == 1) decimalParts = new string[] { exponentParts[0], "0" };

            int exponentValue = int.Parse(exponentParts[1]);

            string newNumber = decimalParts[0].Replace("-", "").
                Replace("+", "") + decimalParts[1];

            string result;

            if (exponentValue > 0)
            {
                if (positive)
                    result =
                        newNumber +
                        GetZeros(exponentValue - decimalParts[1].Length);
                else

                    result = "-" +
                     newNumber +
                     GetZeros(exponentValue - decimalParts[1].Length);


            }
            else // negative exponent
            {
                if (positive)
                    result =
                        "0" +
                        decSeparator +
                        GetZeros(exponentValue + decimalParts[0].Replace("-", "").
                                   Replace("+", "").Length) + newNumber;
                else
                    result =
                    "-0" +
                    decSeparator +
                    GetZeros(exponentValue + decimalParts[0].Replace("-", "").
                             Replace("+", "").Length) + newNumber;

                result = result.TrimEnd('0');
            }
            float temp = 0.00F;

            if (float.TryParse(result, out temp))
            {
                return result;
            }
            throw new Exception();
        }

        private static string GetZeros(int zeroCount)
        {
            if (zeroCount < 0)
                zeroCount = Math.Abs(zeroCount);

            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

            for (int i = 0; i < zeroCount; i++) sb.Append("0");

            return sb.ToString();
        }

        public static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            //Get Input Directory.
            Console.WriteLine(@"Enter the Input Directory");
            var readLine = Console.ReadLine();
            if (readLine == null)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(@"Enter the input path properly.");
                return;
            }
            var pathToInputDirectory = readLine.Trim();

            //Get Output Directory.
            Console.WriteLine(@"Enter the Output Directory");
            readLine = Console.ReadLine();
            if (readLine == null)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(@"Enter the output path properly.");
                return;
            }
            var pathToOutputDirectory = readLine.Trim();

            //Get Delimiter.
            Console.WriteLine("Enter the delimiter;");
            var columnDelimiter = (char)Console.Read();

            //Loop over all files in the directory.
            foreach (var inputFileName in Directory.GetFiles(pathToInputDirectory))
            {
                var outputFileWithouthNumbersInScientificNotation = string.Empty;
                Console.WriteLine("Started operation on File : " + inputFileName);

                if (File.Exists(inputFileName))
                {
                    // Read the file
                    using (var file = new StreamReader(inputFileName))
                    {
                        string line;
                        while ((line = file.ReadLine()) != null)
                        {
                            String[] columns = line.Split(columnDelimiter);
                            var duplicateLine = string.Empty;
                            int lengthOfColumns = columns.Length;
                            int counter = 1;
                            foreach (var column in columns)
                            {
                                var columnDuplicate = column;
                                try
                                {
                                    if (Regex.IsMatch(columnDuplicate.Trim(),
                                                      @"^[+-]?[0-9]+(\.[0-9]+)?[E]([+-]?[0-9]+)$",
                                                      RegexOptions.IgnoreCase))
                                    {
                                        Console.WriteLine("Regular expression matched for this :" + column);

                                        columnDuplicate = ToLongString(Double.Parse
                                                                           (column,
                                                                            System.Globalization.NumberStyles.Float));

                                        Console.WriteLine("Converted this no in scientific notation " +
                                                          "" + column + "  to this number " +
                                                          columnDuplicate);
                                    }
                                }
                                catch (Exception)
                                {

                                }
                                duplicateLine = duplicateLine + columnDuplicate;

                                if (counter != lengthOfColumns)
                                {
                                    duplicateLine = duplicateLine + columnDelimiter.ToString();
                                }
                                counter++;
                            }
                            duplicateLine = duplicateLine + Environment.NewLine;
                            outputFileWithouthNumbersInScientificNotation = outputFileWithouthNumbersInScientificNotation + duplicateLine;
                        }

                        file.Close();
                    }

                    var outputFilePathWithoutNumbersInScientificNotation
                        = Path.Combine(pathToOutputDirectory, Path.GetFileName(inputFileName));

                    //Create Directory If it does not exist.
                    if (!Directory.Exists(pathToOutputDirectory))
                        Directory.CreateDirectory(pathToOutputDirectory);

                    using (var outputFile =
                        new StreamWriter(outputFilePathWithoutNumbersInScientificNotation))
                    {
                        outputFile.Write(outputFileWithouthNumbersInScientificNotation);
                        outputFile.Close();
                    }

                    Console.WriteLine("The transformed file is here :" +
                        outputFilePathWithoutNumbersInScientificNotation);
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

This code takes an input directory and based on the delimiter converts all values in scientific notation to numeric format.

Thanks

Answer 4

Just to build on what jcasso said what you can do is to adjust your double value by changing the exponent so that your favorite format would do it for you, apply the format, and than pad the result with zeros to compensate for the adjustment.

Answer 5

Being millions of programmers world wide, it's always a good practice to try search if someone has bumped into your problem already. Sometimes there's solutions are garbage, which means it's time to write your own, and sometimes there are great, such as the following:

http://www.yoda.arachsys.com/csharp/DoubleConverter.cs

(details: http://www.yoda.arachsys.com/csharp/floatingpoint.html)

Answer 6

I could be wrong, but isn't it like this?

data.ToString("n");

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dwhawy9k.aspx