Javascript: How to retrieve the number of decimals of a *string* number?

Question

I have a set of string numbers having decimals, for example: 23.456, 9.450, 123.01... I need to retrieve the number of decimals for each number, knowing that they have at least 1 decimal.

In other words, the retr_dec() method should return the following:

retr_dec("23.456") -> 3
retr_dec("9.450")  -> 3
retr_dec("123.01") -> 2

Trailing zeros do count as a decimal in this case, unlike in this related question.

Is there an easy/delivered method to achieve this in Javascript or should I compute the decimal point position and compute the difference with the string length? Thanks

Answer 1

function decimalPlaces(num) {
  var match = (''+num).match(/(?:\.(\d+))?(?:[eE]([+-]?\d+))?$/);
  if (!match) { return 0; }
  return Math.max(
       0,
       // Number of digits right of decimal point.
       (match[1] ? match[1].length : 0)
       // Adjust for scientific notation.
       - (match[2] ? +match[2] : 0));
}

The extra complexity is to handle scientific notation so

decimalPlaces('.05')
2
decimalPlaces('.5')
1
decimalPlaces('1')
0
decimalPlaces('25e-100')
100
decimalPlaces('2.5e-99')
100
decimalPlaces('.5e1')
0
decimalPlaces('.25e1')
1