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From: fenn@wpi.WPI.EDU (Brian Fennell)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Implicit decimal points in floating-point reads
Keywords: scanf,floating point,decimal formats
Message-ID: <1991May21.200003.13471@wpi.WPI.EDU>
Date: 21 May 91 20:00:03 GMT
References: <5366@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Lines: 31

In article <5366@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> brotzman@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov writes:
>   The problem I am encountering is this:  FORTRAN allows input strings
>representing floating point values to have implicit decimal places, i.e.
>the string "26208" read with a format of F5.3 results in a value of 26.208.
>As far as I can tell there is no equivalent functionality in C, I have tried
>using scanf with an input format of "%5.3f", but the result is garbage (see
>below).

I think the answer is "you can't get there from here."

>Please tell me that I'm being a bonehead and missing something obvious.  :-)

no bonehead about it, but since this is something you need a fix for,
not a how-do-I-write-like-a-real-C-Guru-would, try this...

>---------------------------< TEST.C >---------------------------------
>#include <stdio.h>
>
>main()
>{  char a1[10] = "26208";
>   float x = 0.0;
>   int ifld = 0;
>   ifld = sscanf(a1, "%5f", &x); 

    x /= 1000.;	/* simple, to the point, no fancy fix routines needed */

>   printf("%s %f\n%s %i", "input string converted to: ", x,
>            "number of parameters converted: ", ifld);
>}

Brian Fennell == fenn@wpi.wpi.edu