Finding the number of digits of an integer

Question

What is the best method to find the number of digits of a positive integer?

I have found this 3 basic methods:

• conversion to string

Answer 1

I was curious after seeing @daniel.sedlacek results so I did some testing using Swift for numbers having more than 10 digits. I ran the following script in the playground.

let base = [Double(100090000000), Double(100050000), Double(100050000), Double(100000200)]
var rar = [Double]()
for i in 1...10 {
    for d in base {
        let v = d*Double(arc4random_uniform(UInt32(1000000000)))
        rar.append(v*Double(arc4random_uniform(UInt32(1000000000))))
        rar.append(Double(1)*pow(1,Double(i)))
    }
}

print(rar)

var timeInterval = NSDate().timeIntervalSince1970

for d in rar {
    floor(log10(d))
}

var newTimeInterval = NSDate().timeIntervalSince1970

print(newTimeInterval-timeInterval)


timeInterval = NSDate().timeIntervalSince1970
for d in rar {
    var c = d
    while c > 10 {
        c = c/10
    }
}

newTimeInterval = NSDate().timeIntervalSince1970

print(newTimeInterval-timeInterval)

Results of 80 elements

0.105069875717163 for floor(log10(x))
0.867973804473877 for div 10 iterations