Formatting numbers

[Jim Hurley]

>
>Message: 21
>Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 15:40:10 -0800
>From: Marty Knapp <martyknapp at comcast.net>
>Subject: Formatting numbers
>To: Revolution User List <use-revolution at lists.runrev.com>
>Message-ID: <43C83A5A.2050809 at comcast.net>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
>Does somebody have a suggestion for formatting numbers with commas for a
>printed report? It wil have columns of data, with numbers ranging from 
>small to large. The larger ones are hard to read, so I'd like to insert
>commas at the appropriate places. I can think of clunky ways to do it,
>but thought I'd ask here in case someone had already brewed up something
>nice.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Marty Knapp


Marty,

Here are a couple of number formatting functions I use a lot.

The first is the standard comma formatting and the second puts the 
number into scientific format.

For example, the number 12225677.98 formats to

Comma format: 12,225,677.98
Scientific format 1.22*10^7

Jim

function commaFormat tNum
   put tNum mod 1 into remainder
   delete char 1 of remainder
   put trunc(tNum) into tNum
   put the number of chars in tNum into n
   repeat with i = 1 to trunc((n-1)/3)
     put comma after char n - 3*i of tNum
   end repeat
   return tNum& remainder
end commaformat

function sciFormat tNum,sigFigures
   if tNum < 0 then
     put "-" into sign
   else put empty into sign
   put abs(tNum) into tNum
   if sigFigures is empty then put 3 into sigFigures    --Default 
significant figures.
   put 0 into count
   if tNum >= 1 then
     repeat until tNum < 10
       divide tNum by 10
       add 1 to count
     end repeat
     put round((10^(sigFigures-1))*tNum)/10^(sigFigures-1) into tNum
     return sign & (char 1 to sigFigures + 1 of tNum) &"*10^" & count
   end if
   if tNum < 1 then
     repeat until tNum >= 1
       multiply tNum by 10
       add 1 to count
     end repeat
   end if
   return sign & (char 1 to sigFigures + 1 of tNum) & "*10^-" & count
end sciFormat