Using round() function in c

I'm a bit confused about the round() function in C.

First of all, man says:

SYNOPSIS #include <math.h> double round(double x); RETURN VALUE These functions return the rounded integer value. If x is integral, +0, -0, NaN, or infinite, x itself is returned. 

The return value is a double / float or an int?

In second place, I've created a function that first rounds, then casts to int. Latter on my code I use it as a mean to compare doubles

int tointn(double in,int n) { int i = 0; i = (int)round(in*pow(10,n)); return i; } 

This function apparently isn't stable throughout my tests. Is there redundancy here? Well... I'm not looking only for an answer, but a better understanding on the subject.

3 Answers

The wording in the man-page is meant to be read literally, that is in its mathematical sense. The wording "x is integral" means that x is an element of Z, not that x has the data type int.

Casting a double to int can be dangerous because the maximum arbitrary integral value a double can hold is 2^52 (assuming an IEEE 754 conforming binary64 ), the maximum value an int can hold might be smaller (it is mostly 32 bit on 32-bit architectures and also 32-bit on some 64-bit architectures).

If you need only powers of ten you can test it with this little program yourself:

#include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <math.h> int main(){ int i; for(i = 0;i < 26;i++){ printf("%d:\t%.2f\t%d\n",i, pow(10,i), (int)pow(10,i)); } exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); } 

Instead of casting you should use the functions that return a proper integral data type like e.g.: lround(3).

here is an excerpt from the man page.

 #include <math.h> double round(double x); float roundf(float x); long double roundl(long double x); 

notice: the returned value is NEVER a integer. However, the fractional part of the returned value is set to 0.

notice: depending on exactly which function is called will determine the type of the returned value.

Here is an excerpt from the man page about which way the rounding will be done:

 These functions round x to the nearest integer, but round halfway cases away from zero (regardless of the current rounding direction, see fenv(3)), instead of to the nearest even integer like rint(3). For example, round(0.5) is 1.0, and round(-0.5) is -1.0. 

If you want a long integer to be returned then please use lround:

long int tolongint(double in) { return lround(in)); } 

For details please see lround which is available as of the C++ 11 standard.