Non-Integer numbers in an String and using atoi

Question

If there are non-number characters in a string and you call atoi [I'm assuming wtoi will do the same]. How will atoi treat the string?

Lets say for an example I have the following strings:

1. "20234543"
2. "232B"
3. "B"

I'm sure that 1 will return the integer 20234543. What I'm curious is if 2 will return "232." [Thats what I need to solve my problem]. Also 3 should not return a value. Are these beliefs false? Also... if 2 does act as I believe, how does it handle the e character at the end of the string? [Thats typically used in exponential notation]

Answer 1

According to the standard, "The functions atof, atoi, atol, and atoll need not affect the value of the integer expression errno on an error. If the value of the result cannot be represented, the behavior is undefined." (7.20.1, Numeric conversion functions in C99).

So, technically, anything could happen. Even for the first case, since INT_MAX is guaranteed to be at least 32767, and since 20234543 is greater than that, it could fail as well.

For better error checking, use strtol:

const char *s = "232B";
char *eptr;
long value = strtol(s, &eptr, 10); /* 10 is the base */
/* now, value is 232, eptr points to "B" */

s = "20234543";
value = strtol(s, &eptr, 10);

s = "123456789012345";
value = strtol(s, &eptr, 10);
/* If there was no overflow, value will contain 123456789012345,
   otherwise, value will contain LONG_MAX and errno will be ERANGE */

If you need to parse numbers with "e" in them (exponential notation), then you should use strtod. Of course, such numbers are floating-point, and strtod returns double. If you want to make an integer out of it, you can do a conversion after checking for the correct range.