Representing big numbers in source code for readability?

Question

Is there a more human-readable way for representing big numbers in the source code of an application written in C++ or C?

let's for example take the number 2,345,879,444,641 , in C or C++ if we wanted a program to return this number we would do return 2345879444641.

But this is not really readable.

In PAWN (a scripting language) for example I can do return 2_345_879_444_641 or even return 2_34_58_79_44_46_41 and these both would return the number 2,345,879,444,641.

This is much more readable for the human-eye.

Is there a C or C++ equivalent for this?

Answer 1

With a current compiler (C++14 or newer), you can use apostrophes, like:

auto a = 1'234'567;

If you're still stuck with C++11, you could use a user-defined literal to support something like: int i = "1_000_000"_i. The code would look something like this:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <cstdlib>

int operator "" _i (char const *in, size_t len) { 
    std::string input(in, len);
    int pos;

    while (std::string::npos != (pos=input.find_first_of("_,"))) 
        input.erase(pos, 1);

    return std::strtol(input.c_str(), NULL, 10);
}

int main() { 
    std::cout << "1_000_000_000"_i;
}

As I've written it, this supports underscores or commas interchangeably, so you could use one or the other, or both. For example, "1,000_000" would turn out as 1000000.

Of course, Europeans would probably prefer "." instead of "," -- if so, feel free to modify as you see fit.

Answer 2

With Boost.PP:

#define NUM(...) \
    NUM_SEQ(BOOST_PP_VARIADIC_TO_SEQ(__VA_ARGS__)) 
#define NUM_SEQ(seq) \
    BOOST_PP_SEQ_FOLD_LEFT(NUM_FOLD, BOOST_PP_SEQ_HEAD(seq), BOOST_PP_SEQ_TAIL(seq)) 
#define NUM_FOLD(_, acc, x) \
    BOOST_PP_CAT(acc, x)

Usage:

NUM(123, 456, 789) // Expands to 123456789

Demo.

Another way is making an UDL. Left as an exercise (and also because it requires more code).