Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!ucsd!ucsdhub!esosun!seismo!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: algorithm to convert N into base 3 wanted!
Message-ID: <11966@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 24 Aug 88 19:47:57 GMT
References: <650003@hpcilzb.HP.COM>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 30

In article <650003@hpcilzb.HP.COM> tedj@hpcilzb.HP.COM (Ted Johnson) writes:
>Does anyone know of an algorithm to convert a positive integer N into
>its base 3 representation?  (e.g., 14 in base 10 is 112 in base 3).

This is one of the problems given in _intro to programming_ courses, but
here's the C code for any positive integer to any base 1..16. Note I'm
typing it in, so look for typos before you tell me it doesn't work.

print_to_base(val, base)
  int val, base;
{
  register int a;
  static char *digits = "0123456789ABCDEF";

  if (a = val/base) print_to_base(a, base);
  putchar(digits[val%base]);
}

I usually let students modify it to handle negative values, fixed width,
etc. I use a form of it to output things to binary, writing to an
internal string and returning the address of the string.

Disclamer: at least ten people will tell me there's a better way to do
the general case, or to do the base three case only. At least twice as
many people will tell me there's a better way than tried to help the
original poster. If my company has an opinion they don't tell me.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me