redhat man page for ecvt

ECVT(3) 						     Linux Programmer's Manual							   ECVT(3)

NAME
       ecvt, fcvt - convert a floating-point number to a string.

SYNOPSIS
       #include <stdlib.h>

       char *ecvt(double number, int ndigits, int *decpt, int *sign);

       char *fcvt(double number, int ndigits, int *decpt, int *sign);

DESCRIPTION
       The  ecvt()  function  converts	number to a null-terminated string of ndigits digits (where ndigits is reduced to an system-specific limit
       determined by the precision of a double), and returns a pointer to the string. The high-order digit is nonzero, unless number is zero.  The
       low order digit is rounded.  The string itself does not contain a decimal point; however, the position of the decimal point relative to the
       start of the string is stored in *decpt. A negative value for *decpt means that the decimal point is to	the  left  of  the  start  of  the
       string.	If the sign of number is negative, *sign is set to a non-zero value, otherwise it's set to 0. If number is zero, it is unspecified
       whether *decpt is 0 or 1.

       The fcvt() function is identical to ecvt(), except that ndigits specifies the number of digits after the decimal point.

RETURN VALUE
       Both the ecvt() and fcvt() functions return a pointer to a static string containing the ASCII representation of number.	The static  string
       is overwritten by each call to ecvt() or fcvt().

NOTES
       These  functions  are obsolete. Instead, sprintf() is recommended.  Linux libc4 and libc5 specified the type of ndigits as size_t.  Not all
       locales use a point as the radix character (`decimal point').

CONFORMING TO
       SysVR2, XPG2

SEE ALSO
       ecvt_r(3), gcvt(3), qecvt(3), setlocale(3), sprintf(3)

								    1999-06-25								   ECVT(3)