How to manually parse a floating point number from a string

Question

Of course most languages have library functions for this, but suppose I want to do it myself.

Suppose that the float is given like in a C or Java program (except for

Answer 1

All of the other answers have missed how hard it is to do this properly. You can do a first cut approach at this which is accurate to a certain extent, but until you take into account IEEE rounding modes (et al), you will never have the right answer. I've written naive implementations before with a rather large amount of error.

If you're not scared of math, I highly recommend reading the following article by David Goldberg, What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic. You'll get a better understanding for what is going on under the hood, and why the bits are laid out as such.

My best advice is to start with a working atoi implementation, and move out from there. You'll rapidly find you're missing things, but a few looks at strtod's source and you'll be on the right path (which is a long, long path). Eventually you'll praise insert diety here that there are standard libraries.

/* use this to start your atof implementation */

/* atoi - christopher.watford@gmail.com */
/* PUBLIC DOMAIN */
long atoi(const char *value) {
  unsigned long ival = 0, c, n = 1, i = 0, oval;
  for( ; c = value[i]; ++i) /* chomp leading spaces */
    if(!isspace(c)) break;
  if(c == '-' || c == '+') { /* chomp sign */
    n = (c != '-' ? n : -1);
    i++;
  }
  while(c = value[i++]) { /* parse number */
    if(!isdigit(c)) return 0;
    ival = (ival * 10) + (c - '0'); /* mult/accum */
    if((n > 0 && ival > LONG_MAX)
    || (n < 0 && ival > (LONG_MAX + 1UL))) {
      /* report overflow/underflow */
      errno = ERANGE;
      return (n > 0 ? LONG_MAX : LONG_MIN);
    }
  }
  return (n>0 ? (long)ival : -(long)ival);
}