Counting digits using while loop

Question

I was recently making a program which needed to check the number of digits in a number inputted by the user. As a result I made the following code:

int x;    
cout << "Enter a number: ";
cin >> x;
x /= 10;
while(x > 0)
{
  count++;
  x = x/10;
}

From what I can tell (even with my limited experience) is that it seems crude and rather unelegant.

Does anyone have an idea on how to improve this code (while not using an inbuilt c++ function)?

Answer 1

In your particular example you could read the number as a string and count the number of characters.

But for the general case, you can do it your way or you can use a base-10 logarithm.

Here is the logarithm example:

#include <iostream>
#include <cmath>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
    double n;
    cout << "Enter a number: ";
    cin >> n;

    cout << "Log 10 is " << log10(n) << endl;
    cout << "Digits are " << ceil(log10(fabs(n)+1)) << endl;
    return 0;
}

Answer 2

int count = (x == 0) ? 1 : (int)(std::log10(std::abs((double)(x)))))) + 1;