SHIP:Sail:ltod

Function	Returns	Introduced	Description
ltod	Long	v5.1.0	Explicitly casts a Long to a Double

See Also:

• Sail Home
• Sail Functions
• Sail Numeric Functions
• abs, ceil, floor, ftoi, max, min, round

Prototype

Double ltod(Long n);

Parameters/Return Value

Parameter	Data Type	Description
n	Long	the number to cast
Return	Double	the floating point version of the supplied number

Detailed Description

The ltod() function explicitly casts the supplied Long to a Double. You may want to use this in mathematical expressions around items so that the expression evaluation is moved into the floating point domain. For example:

lngValue = 5/4*10;

will return 10 since the whole expression is evaluated at run-time in the Long domain, and 5/4 will be evaluated using integer math resulting in 1. However,

intValue = 5/ltod(4)*10;

will return 11 since the 5/4 will be evaluated using floating point math. Obviously, this is equivalent to:

lngValue = 5/4.0*10;

However,this methodology becomes more useful when a function that returns a Double is used:

lngValue = 5/itof(strlen(s))*10;

Examples

Example	Result	Notes
ltod(-5);	-5.0
ltod(5);	5.0