Objective c string formatter for distances

Question

I have a distance as a float and I\'m looking for a way to format it nicely for human readers. Ideally, I\'d like it to change from m to km as it gets bigger, and to round the n

Answer 1

Here's how I do it. This uses the locale of the user to properly format the string, which you should probably do too.

// Returns a string representing the distance in the correct units.
// If distance is greater than convert max in feet or meters, 
// the distance in miles or km is returned instead
NSString* getDistString(float distance, int convertMax, BOOL includeUnit) {
  NSString * unitName;
  if (METRIC) {
    unitName = @"m";
    if (convertMax != -1 && distance > convertMax) {
      unitName = @"km";
      distance = distance / 1000;
    }
  } else {
    unitName = @"ft";
    if (convertMax != -1 && distance > convertMax) {
      unitName = @"mi";
      distance = distance / 5280;
    }
    distance = metersToFeet(distance);
  }

  if (includeUnit) return [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@ %@", formatDecimal_1(distance), unitName];

  return formatDecimal_1(distance);

}
// returns a string if the number with one decimal place of precision
// sets the style (commas or periods) based on the locale
NSString * formatDecimal_1(float num) {
  static NSNumberFormatter *numFormatter;
  if (!numFormatter) {
    numFormatter = [[[NSNumberFormatter alloc] init] retain];
    [numFormatter setFormatterBehavior:NSNumberFormatterBehavior10_4];
    [numFormatter setLocale:[NSLocale currentLocale]];
    [numFormatter setNumberStyle:NSNumberFormatterDecimalStyle];
    [numFormatter setMaximumFractionDigits:1];
    [numFormatter setMinimumFractionDigits:1];
  }

  return [numFormatter stringFromNumber:F(num)];

}