{"id":577,"date":"2014-03-08T00:01:42","date_gmt":"2014-03-08T08:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/c-for-dummies.com\/blog\/?p=577"},"modified":"2014-03-01T10:08:07","modified_gmt":"2014-03-01T18:08:07","slug":"splitting-things-in-half","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c-for-dummies.com\/blog\/?p=577","title":{"rendered":"Splitting Things in Half"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s pretty safe to avoid your first instinct when it comes to dividing two integers. That first instinct is most likely to typecast the int<\/em> values as float. That works, and many times it can be the best solution, but it’s not always the<\/em> solution.
\n
\nWhen you deal in integer values, and those values must be split, you typically ignore anything left over — the remainder. So 13 divided by 2 is going to equal either 6 or 7, take your pick. You don’t want to split hairs — or integers.<\/p>\n

For example, consider you have a burning desire to split a string of text in two. Strings with an even length split evenly. Strings with an odd length don’t split evenly; you can’t have a string with half a letter in it.<\/p>\n

In the end, you manipulate an integer value without regard for fractions.<\/p>\n

The simple way to split an int<\/em> value in twain is to divide it by 2. Yes, division is normally performed with floating point values. Even when dividing integers, the result often ends up being a float<\/em>. Feel free to disregard that thinking for a moment and behold this sample code:<\/p>\n

\r\n#include <stdio.h>\r\n\r\nint main()\r\n{\r\n    int alpha = 29;\r\n\r\n    printf(\"29 divided by 2 is %d.\\n\",alpha\/2);\r\n\r\n    return(0);\r\n}<\/pre>\n
Here’s the output:<\/p>\n
29 divided by 2 is 14.<\/code><\/p>\n
And, of course, that answer won’t get you an ‘A’ on human math quiz, but it’s how the computer deals with dividing two int<\/em> values. It’s also sufficient for splitting a string in two; 14 characters of a 29-character string is good enough for “half.”<\/p>\n
To get the true result, you need to make two modifications.<\/p>\n
First, at least one of the values in the equation alpha\/2<\/code> must be a floating point value, a real number.<\/p>\n
Second, you need to modify the printf()<\/em> statement to use the %f<\/code> conversion character.<\/p>\n
Solving the first problem can be done in several ways. The most obvious is to change variable alpha<\/code> from an int<\/em> to a float<\/em> at Line 5:<\/p>\n
float alpha = 29;<\/code><\/p>\n
Or you can typecast either the variable alpha<\/code> or the immediate value 2<\/code> in the printf()<\/em> function, thus:<\/p>\n
printf(\"29 divided by 2 is %f.\\n\",(float)alpha<\/span>\/2);<\/code><\/p>\n
Or this:<\/p>\n
printf(\"29 divided by 2 is %f.\\n\",alpha\/(float)2<\/span>);<\/code><\/p>\n
You see above that I’ve already addressed the second modification, which is changing the %d<\/code> to %f<\/code>. Actually, I prefer to use %.1f<\/code> for this problem, which yields the following output:<\/p>\n
29 divided by 2 is 14.5.<\/code><\/p>\n
That result isn’t going to help you when it comes to printing half a string of text, but it’s one way to solve the problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Division normally lies in the realm of real numbers, the floats<\/em> and doubles<\/em>. It can, however, be done quickly on an integer, just not that accurately. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-for-dummies.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-for-dummies.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-for-dummies.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-for-dummies.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-for-dummies.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=577"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/c-for-dummies.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":599,"href":"https:\/\/c-for-dummies.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577\/revisions\/599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-for-dummies.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-for-dummies.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-for-dummies.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}