atof Function

Converts a string to a double precision floating-point value.

Include

<stdlib.h>

Prototype

double atof(const char *s);

Argument

s

pointer to the string to be converted

Return Value

Returns the converted value if successful; otherwise, returns 0.

Remarks

The number may consist of the following:

[whitespace] [sign] digits [.digits] [ { e | E }[sign]digits]

Optional whitespace followed by an optional sign, then a sequence of one or more digits with an optional decimal point, followed by one or more optional digits and an optional e or E followed by an optional signed exponent. The conversion stops when the first unrecognized character is reached. The conversion is the same as strtod(s,0) except it does no error checking so errno will not be set.

Example

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(void)
{
  char a[] = " 1.28";
  char b[] = "27.835e2";
  char c[] = "Number1";
  double x;

  x = atof(a);
  printf("String = \"%s\" float = %f\n", a, x);

  x = atof(b);
  printf("String = \"%s\" float = %f\n", b, x);

  x = atof(c);
  printf("String = \"%s\"  float = %f\n", c, x);
} 

Example Output

String = "1.28"     float = 1.280000
String = "27.835:e2" float = 2783.500000
String = "Number1"  float = 0.000000