FATOLONG C-3

fatolong - convert ASCII to LONG value

Fatolong converts a string pointed to by sptr to an integer value using format to control the conversion. The result of the conversion is stored in the LONG value pointed at by l. Size is the size of the LONG value. Although the name implies only long integers, fatolong supports both long and short integers. Size must be the size of a long or short integer.

Fatolong first tries to convert sptr using format. If this fails, fatolong applies a set of standard input rules. These rules allow an optional string of tabs and spaces, then an optional minus sign, then a string of digits. The string may also contain one or more of the thousands separator character (returned by getfthou(C-3)) to make the number more readable.

Fatolong returns the number of characters in sptr used to convert the value. The advantages of calling fatolong over atol(3) or atolong(C-3) is that fatolong understands special formats and special characters for any defined country, it accepts a number containing embedded thousands separator characters (commas for U.S.A. formats), and it has additional checks for overflow and edit errors.

The first unrecognized character ends the string. When doing edit checks, it is left to the calling program to determine if the remaining unrecognized characters should be considered valid.

fcountry(C-3), getfthou(C-3), atolong(C-3), atol(3)

C/Base Reference Manual Chapter 13, "Formatting Data Values"

If an error occurs, fatolong returns a negative number and the contents of l are undefined. The following symbolic error codes are defined in <cbase/dtypes.h>:

FTOOBIG size is not the size of a long or short integer (use sizeof function) or the result overflowed

FFORMAT format is invalid

FIFORMAT sptr does not conform to any of the formatting rules