Return first digit of an integer

Question

How in Java do you return the first digit of an integer.?

i.e.

345

Returns an int of 3.

Answer 1

I think this might be a nice way to do that:

public static int length(int number) {
    return (int)Math.log10(Math.abs(number)) + 1;
}

public static int digit(int number, int digit) {
    for (int i = 0; i < digit; i++) {
        number /= 10;
    }
    return Math.abs(number % 10);
}

Works for both negative and positive numbers. digit(345, length(345) - 1) will return 3, digit(345, 0) will return 5 e.g. and so on...