SHIP:Sail:ltof

Function	Returns	Introduced	Description
ltof	Long	v5.1.0	Explicitly casts a Long to a Float

See Also:

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

Prototype

Float ltof(Long n);

Parameters/Return Value

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

Detailed Description

The ltof() function explicitly casts the supplied Long to an Float. 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/itof(4)*10;

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

lngValue = 5/4.0f*10;

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

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

Examples

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