In .NET what is the best way to find the length of an integer in characters if it was represented as a string?
e.g.
1 = 1 character
10 = 2 characters
99 = 2 characters
100 = 3 characters
1000 = 4 characters
The obvious answer is to convert the int to a string and get its length but I want the best performance possible without the overhead of creating a new string.
you can use logartihms to calculate the length of the int:
public static int IntLength(int i) {
if (i <= 0) throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException();
return (int)Math.Floor(Math.Log10(i)) + 1;
}
the test passes:
[Test]
public void TestIntLength() {
Assert.AreEqual(1, IntLength(1));
Assert.AreEqual(1, IntLength(9));
Assert.AreEqual(2, IntLength(10));
Assert.AreEqual(2, IntLength(99));
Assert.AreEqual(3, IntLength(100));
Assert.AreEqual(3, IntLength(999));
Assert.AreEqual(4, IntLength(1000));
Assert.AreEqual(10, IntLength(int.MaxValue));
}
a quick test has shown that the log-method is 4 times faster than the int.ToString().Length method..
the method shown by GvS below (using if-statements) is another 6 times (!) faster than the log method:
public static int IntLengthIf(int i) {
if (i < 10) return 1;
if (i < 100) return 2;
if (i < 1000) return 3;
if (i < 10000) return 4;
if (i < 100000) return 5;
if (i < 1000000) return 6;
if (i < 10000000) return 7;
if (i < 100000000) return 8;
if (i < 1000000000) return 9;
throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException();
}
here are the exact timings for the numbers 1 to 10000000:
IntLengthToString: 4205ms
IntLengthLog10: 1122ms
IntLengthIf: 201ms