Universidad de Costa Rica Escuela de Ciencias de la Computación e Informática

mnyfmt.c: A simple function to format money or currency amounts

Abstract   

Introduction   

Formatting money amounts is simple to describe: it is the task of obtaining a string that corresponds to the value of an amount that is stored in a numeric (binary) variable. For example, if the amount is -2455.87003 one possible formatting is "$**-2,455.88" and another is "(€ 2.455,87)"; note that it is a valid strategy to truncate or to round up a floating point value. The complexity of the task increases because there are many choices for rounding [WIKI-2012a], as well as different currencies and symbols to represent them: ('$', '¥', '€', '£', '₡', etc.). Moreover, countries use a different number of decimal fractions for their money: most European currencies have 2 decimals cents, but many Arab currencies require 3 decimals for the fractional parts.

At first sight it appears that inserting commas ',' every 3 digits and later swapping them with dots '.' when needed does the job, but there are cases that can appear weird to many: in India digits in money quantities are grouped in pairs, but the second group can contain up to 3 digits [WIKI-2012b]:

For example, the amount ₨3,25,84,729.25 is read as three crore(s), twenty-five lakh(s), eighty-four thousand, seven hundred and twenty-nine rupees and twenty-five paise.

To me, this means that every application must define many details when dealing with money values. There are just way too many rounding choices and way too many formatting alternatives, none of which can be tagged as the more general or more appropriate. In the C and C++ world the solution has been to use locales, where currency information is stored. In an explanation on how to deal with them, P.J. Plauger writes:

"Committee X3J11 put all this stuff in the C Standard because IBM said that's what the world needed. Shawn Elliott, the IBM representative to the C standards committee, showed us a report that was truly mind-boggling. It showed all the ways that people write monetary and non-monetary values around the world. I didn't know whether to be more impressed by the variety that the IBM researchers unearthed or by the effort they made to unearth it." [Plauger-1991].

In his paper, Plauger also provided a function named _Fmtval() to use locales for formatting currency. However, in a later article he said that his function was "... messy and hard to read ..." [Plauger-1998]. This was really discouraging to me, as Plauger is a C/C++ expert with notorious knowledge on the subject of locales. I asked myself; "Is it possible to format money quantities without resorting to locales?" (Probably, I should not say this, but my drive to find a different solution comes from my dislike for the complexities of locales in both C and C++).

When I learned programming, I was first taught Fortran (for "scientific applications") and later Cobol. I had to use a lot of picture clauses [WIKI-2012c] in my programs: these are simple to define, use, and provide many formatting options. Each format digit '9' in picture clause "999,999.99" gets substituted by the corresponding number. Also, the monetary sign can "float" toward the more significant digit: this means that the picture clause "$$$,$$9.99" will result in "$22,555.00" for a big number, or in "$22.00" for a smaller one, as the leading '$' signs become white space as needed. These patterns have worked well for decades, but they are not part of the C++ or C library. Why is that? I do not know the answer, but nonetheless I decided to write a function that mimics Cobol's approach to formatting.

Simpler is better   

I named my function mnyfmt(), which is a 6 letter acronym, inspired on the name of the strlen() function that first mentions the name of the object it acts on (a C string implemented as a zero terminated character array), and uses the last 3 letters to describe the action it does (calculate the length of the string). I thought of calling the function fmtmny(), but I decided that mentioning that name in this article would be enough for search engines to hit on mnyfmt() -- neither name is "taken" which is a good thing.

My second challenge was to figure out how to round numbers [WIKI-2012a]. I discovered that truncation is just one of more than a dozen options and I also discovered that bankers use a special rounding scheme called "round half to even", where rounding goes to the closer integer number, but halves always round to an even number. For example, -12.63 rounds to integer -13 and -12.50 rounds to -12 but +13.50 rounds to 14. Handling so many rounding schemes is overwhelming, which lead me to decide to leave the problem aside. Hence, my function does not receive a floating point value, but instead uses 2 integer parameters: one is the integer part of the number to format, and the other is the fractional part. Programmers must round their values before invoking mnyfmt(): the invocation reads mnyfmt(12,50) instead of mnyfmt(12.50) (with a comma ',' instead of a dot '.').

My first implementation was a C++ template function receiving a std::string<> argument. However, I discovered that I was not using any template nor std::string<> functionality: this lead me to replace the C++ std::string<> with a regular zero terminated character array. I also added a parameter to mark the fractional separator. In most of my test programs I used only commas ',' and dots '.', but there are situations where other fractional separators are useful. At that point the prototype for the function was this:

char* mnyfmt(char *fmtstr, char dec, long intpart, int fractpart);

{{  // test.overwrite
    typedef struct struct_overwrite {
        char bytes_8[8]; // 64 bits: probably aligned
        int  int_neg;    // -1 usually has all its bits equal to 1
    } overwrite;

    overwrite o = { '1','2','3','4','5','6','7','\0',  -1 };
    assertTrue( 8-1==strlen(o.bytes_8) && o.int_neg == -1 );

    strcpy( o.bytes_8, "1234567.." ); // 2 more bytes...
    assertTrue( 9==strlen(o.bytes_8) );
    assertFalse( o.int_neg == -1 && "Adjacent memory overwritten " );
    assertTrue(  o.int_neg != -1 );

    assertTrue(  CHAR_BIT == 8 && "8 bits bytes required" );
}}

I decided to use only one (char*) argument because I know that C strings are problematic when dealing with limited memory. For example, in Figure 1 field bytes_8[] can only hold 8 characters: when 10 are copied into it, the last 2 will overwrite whatever values are stored after bytes_8[], in this case changing the value of the field int_neg. The value stored within bytes_8[] will not seem wrong, but the operation will change other value (or values): this is what makes this type of error particularly difficult to catch, as it causes failures that behave in strange ways that oftentimes are not consistent. When the string that contains the picture clause is also the place where the formatted value will reside, the programmer needs to check that this variable is large enough. However, for most applications a string of 96 or 128 bytes will be big enough because numbers with more than 40 digits are rare; 14 trillion requires (only) 16 digits, including 2 digits for the fraction, which makes a 48 or a 96 string at least twice as big as it is needed to hold the formatted value.

It is a well known programming best practice to build any program along with its test data [Beck-2002]. The assertions assertTrue() and assertFalse() used in most examples in this article mimic those of JUnit (the test framework for Java [BG-1998]) and are further explained in [DiM-2008]: in here they just output the condition tested when it fails. These 2 macros are defined in header file uUnit.h. Besides clarifying the code, these examples come directly from the test program in file mnyfmtts.c. For example, whenever the assertion assertTrue(1==2) is executed in line 63 of the mnyfmtts.c file, it puts the following message on the standard output:

=\_fail: 1==2
=/ (63) mnyfmtts.c

{{  // test.sgn.ptr
    char *sgn, fmtstr[96];          // Picture clause
    strcpy(                fmtstr ,   "999.999.999,99" );
    if (( sgn = mnyfmt(    fmtstr , ',', 123456789,88 ) )) {
        assertTrue( eqstr( fmtstr ,   "123.456.789,88" ) );
        assertTrue( eqstr( fmtstr , sgn ) );
    }
    strcpy(                fmtstr ,    "999.999.999,99" );
    if (( sgn = mnyfmt(    fmtstr , ','   , -102455,87 ) )) {
        assertTrue( eqstr( fmtstr ,    "00-.102.455,87" ) );
        assertTrue( eqstr(    sgn ,      "-.102.455,87" ) );
        if ( (*sgn=='-') && ('.'==*(sgn+1)) ) { ++sgn; *sgn='-'; }
        assertTrue( eqstr(    sgn ,       "-102.455,87" ) );
    }
}}

Earlier versions of mnyfmt() returned a pointer to the formatted string, (mimicking strcpy()'s behavior), but it turns out that it is more useful if a pointer to the first significant digit is returned, as it is shown in Figure 2, so that the same picture clause "999.999.999,99" can be used to format a small value like 1235.87 or a huge one like 123456789.88 (which reaches hundreds of millions). Also, mnyfmt() always uses character '-' to represent the negative sign, and it gets placed on top of the corresponding format character '9': the only character in the format string that ever gets changed is format character '9'. As expected, eqstr() compares 2 C strings and returns true only if they are equal.

As mnyfmt() simply substitutes each format character '9' with the corresponding digit, sometimes the result begins with a decimal separator, as it happened in the example shown in Figure 2 where the returned result "-,102.455,0087" contains a comma after the '-' sign. This special case should be handled by the programmer as there is no generalized solution that can be applied by mnyfmt().

{{  // test.example
    // (2^128 < 10^40) && (2*40 < 96) ==> 96 is big enough 
    char *sgn, fmtstr[96], buffer[96];

    strcpy( buffer, "USD$ " );     // Picture clause
    strcpy(              fmtstr ,   "99,999,999.99999" );
    if (( sgn = mnyfmt(  fmtstr , '.'  ,-102455,87 ) )) {
        assertTrue( eqstr( fmtstr , "0-,102,455.00087") );
        if ( (*sgn=='-') && (','==*(sgn+1)) ) { ++sgn; *sgn='-'; }
        assertTrue( eqstr( sgn,       "-102,455.00087") );

        strcat( buffer , sgn );
        assertTrue( eqstr( buffer,"USD$ -102,455.00087") );
    }
    else {
        assertFalse( "ERROR [???]: "   "-102,455.00087" );
    }
}}

{{  // test.PITFALL
    char *sgn, fmtstr[96], buffer[96];

    strcpy( buffer, "USD$ " );     // Picture clause
    strcpy(              fmtstr ,   "99,999,999" );
    if (( sgn = mnyfmt(  fmtstr , '.'  ,-102455,87 ) )) {
        assertFalse( "ERROR [fractpart should be 0 not" ",87" );
    }
    else {
        assertTrue( sgn == 0 ); // NULL means mnyfmt() returns ERROR 
    }

    strcpy(              fmtstr ,   "99,999,999.9999" );
    if (( sgn = mnyfmt(  fmtstr , '.'  ,-102455,0077 ) )) {
        assertTrue( eqstr( sgn ,     "-,102,455.0063" ) );
    }
    {
        assertFalse( 0077 == 77 );     // 0077 is an octal literal
        assertTrue(  0077 == 8*7+7 );  // 0077 == 63 decimal
    }
}}

The implementation of mnyfmt() is quite straightforward: it locates the decimal fractional character, and backs up substituting the format character '9' with the corresponding digit, then does the same forward with the decimal fraction. Any other characters remain untouched, and only the format characters that come immediately after the fractional character are substituted. When the operation fails for any reason, mnyfmt() returns (char*)(0). As it is shown in Figure 3, every invocation to mnyfmt() requires checking that a non null value is returned.

When a format string does not have decimals, the fractional part in the invocation to mnyfmt() must be zero. For example, in the lower part of Figure 3 (marked test.PITFALL), the fractional part 87 cannot be stored within the format string "99,999,999" because it has no place for decimals; this forces mnyfmt() to return error NULL==(char*)(0) because the format string does no have space for the fractional part: all the fractional part should fit within the format characters for the fraction. Note also that value 87 gets formated as "00087" when five format digits apprear in the fractional part of the format string ".99999" (the fractional part value 87000 would be formated as ".87000" using format string ".99999"). Octal number literals always begin with digit 0; this can lead to errors if a number literal is used, as it is shown in the lower part of Figure 3, where the program source code is "-102455,0077" but the compiler interprets (correctly) the base 8 literal number "0077" as 63.

{{  // test.too.small
    char *sgn, fmtstr[96];
    strcpy(             fmtstr ,       "999.99999" );
    if (( sgn = mnyfmt( fmtstr , '.' , 2455,87 ) )) {
        // never executed ==> buffer too small
        // 2455 has 4>3 digits [999.]
    }
    assertTrue( sgn == 0 );
    assertTrue( eqstr( fmtstr , "999.99999") );
}}

The value returned by mnyfmt() in Figure 4 is the null pointer (char*)(0) because the integer part of the value to format 2455 requires space for 4 digits, but the picture clause has only 3 format characters '9' before the decimal separator '.' (as expected, passing a null pointer to mnyfmt() also results in a null pointer return). Note that the fmtstr[] remains unchanged.

{{  // test.parentheses
    char *sgn, fmtstr[96], buffer[96];

    strcpy( buffer, "USD$ " );
    strcpy(             fmtstr , "9,999,999.999" );
    if (( sgn = mnyfmt( fmtstr , '.' ,-102455,87 ) )) {
        if ( *sgn=='-' ) { // put parentheses around the formatted value 
            if (','==*(sgn+1)) { ++sgn; *sgn='-'; } // skip comma
            strcat( buffer , "(" );
            strcat( buffer , sgn );
            strcat( buffer , ")" );
            assertTrue( eqstr( buffer, "USD$ (-102,455.087)") );
        }
        else {
            strcat( buffer , sgn );
        }
    }
}}

More interesting formatting can be achieved with mnyfmt(). For example, in Figure 5 a second variable called buffer is used to put parentheses around the formatted value if it is negative.

{{  // test.asterisks
    char *sgn, fmtstr[96];

    strcpy(              fmtstr ,   "$9,999,999.999" );
    if (( sgn = mnyfmt(  fmtstr , '.' ,   -455,87 ) )) {
        if ( (*sgn=='-') && (','==*(sgn+1)) ) { ++sgn; *sgn='-'; }
        assertTrue( eqstr(  sgn ,         "-455.087") );
        for ( --sgn; (sgn!=fmtstr ); --sgn ) {
            *sgn = '*'; // avoid writing over "$"
        }
        assertTrue( eqstr( fmtstr , "$*****-455.087" ) );
    }
}}

Sometimes the money amount must fill the whole picture clause and its leading non significant digits must be displayed as an asterisk '*'. Figure 6 is an example of this.

{{  // test.modf
    char *sgn, fmtstr[96];

    double   intdouble, fractdouble;
    long     intpart;
    unsigned fractpart;

    fractdouble = modf( 2455.87 , &intdouble );
    intpart    = intdouble;                        // 2455
    fractpart  = (unsigned)(fractdouble*100)*1000; //     .86000
    {
        assertFalse( fractpart == 87000 && "???");
        assertTrue(  fractpart == 86000 && "!!!"); // binary rounding...
    }
    strcpy(             fmtstr ,     "[[ 999,999.99999 ]]" );
    if (( sgn = mnyfmt( fmtstr , '.' , intpart,fractpart ) )) {
        assertTrue( eqstr( fmtstr ,  "[[ 002,455.86000 ]]" ) );
        assertTrue( eqstr( sgn    ,       "2,455.86000 ]]") );
        {   // std::round_toward_infinity
            fractpart = (unsigned)(ceil(fractdouble*100))*1000;
            strcpy(        fmtstr , "[[ 999,999.99999 ]]" );
            assertTrue(  fractpart == 87000 && "!!!");
            if (( sgn = mnyfmt(  fmtstr , '.' , intpart,fractpart ) )) {
                assertTrue( eqstr( sgn,  "2,455.87000 ]]") );
            }
        }
    }
}}

Dealing with floating point values is not as hard as it appears, but some care should be taken. In the example in Figure 7 the (double) value to format is taken apart into its integer and fractional parts using standard function modf(). The value written in the program is 2455.87, but the fractional part calculated by modf() is 86, not 87, as the binary representation of this number is not exact in machines that use IEEE 754 binary floating point arithmetic [WIKI-2012d]. To get the expected result a rounding strategy must be applied: in this case it is rounding up. The non format characters "[[ ]]" that surround the picture clause are left untouched by mnyfmt().

{{  // test.limit
    char *sgn, fmtstr[96];
    #ifndef MNYFMT_NO_LONG_LONG
        mnyfmt_long max = LONG_LONG_MAX;
        strcpy( fmtstr , "999,999,999,999,999,999,999" );
        //                  9,223,372,036,854,775,807
        if ( 9223372036854775807LL == LONG_LONG_MAX ) {
            if (( sgn = mnyfmt( fmtstr , ' ' ,  max,0 ) )) {
                assertTrue( eqstr( "9,223,372,036,854,775,807", sgn ) );
            }
        }
        else {
            assertFalse( "BEWARE: (long long) is not 8 bytes wide" );
        }
    #endif
    {
        mnyfmt_long max = LONG_MAX;
        strcpy( fmtstr , "999,999,999,999" );
        //                  2,147,483,647
        if ( 2147483647L == LONG_MAX ) {
            if (( sgn = mnyfmt( fmtstr , ' ' , max,0 ) )) {
                assertTrue( eqstr( "2,147,483,647", sgn ) );
            }
        }
        else {
            assertFalse( "BEWARE: (long) is not 4 bytes wide" );
        }
    }
}}

The final implementation of mnyfmt() can be compiled by any version of a C compiler. This makes the function even more useful because it is available to a wider audience. Even older C++ compilers support the (long long) data type, which gets implemented at least as a 64 bit binary number that has enough range to represent most money quantities. To make it possible to use mnyfmt() in compilers that do not have this type, macro MNYFMT_NO_LONG_LONG is used to define mnyfmt_long (the type of the integer part of the number), as (long) instead of (long long) as shown in Figure 8.

{{  // test.fract.zero
    char *sgn, fmtstr[96];
    int i,tenPow;
    // The fraction 643/2136 approximates log10(2) to 7 significant digits.
    int N = ( ( CHAR_BIT * sizeof(int) - 1 )  * 643 / 2136 );

    tenPow = 120;
    for ( i=0; i<N; ++i ) {
        strcpy(             fmtstr ,  "999,999.999999999" );
        if (( sgn = mnyfmt( fmtstr , '.', -455,tenPow ) )) {
            if ( (*sgn=='-') && (','==*(sgn+1)) ) { ++sgn; *sgn='-'; }
            assertFalse( eqstr( fmtstr ,  "00--455.120000000" ) );
            assertFalse( eqstr(    sgn ,     "-455.120000000" ) );
            tenPow *= 10; // 120 1200 12000 120000 ...
        }
    }
}}

The number of trailing zeroes in the fractional part does change the formatted value, as it is shown in Figure 9. There is no need for a negative fractional part because the sign of the currency value to format comes in its integer part. The signature for the final version of mnyfmt() is:

#ifndef MNYFMT_NO_LONG_LONG
    typedef long long mnyfmt_long;
#else
    typedef long mnyfmt_long;
#endif

char* mnyfmt(char *fmtstr, char dec, mnyfmt_long intpart, unsigned fractpart);

Further details   

The test program mnyfmtts.c contains all the program segments shown in this article and a few more. It can be used to understand the behavior of mnyfmt() in many situations beyond those described here.

Many C library functions come in several flavors, one for each type. For example, functions lround(),lroundf(), lroundl() llround(),llroundf() and llroundl() are versions for the same rounding function whose name changes because they return a different type of integer and take a different type of floating point. For mnyfmt() it is not necessary to have these many versions because conversion to the wider integer type is always provided by the compiler. It is also unnecessary to provide versions that use the wider characters types, as (wchar_t), because picture clauses use single byte characters (char) that can be converted easily into those other types.

{{  // Convert a char[] into a wchar_t[]
    char    *src,  chBuff[128];
    wchar_t *dst, *wcBuff;
    strcpy (chBuff, "Convert me to (wchar_t)");
    wcBuff = (wchar_t*)( malloc( sizeof(chBuff)*sizeof(wchar_t) ) );
    for ( dst=wcBuff,src=chBuff; (*dst=*src); ++dst,++src ) {}
    // ... C++ will let you use more sophisticated stuff
    free(wcBuff);
}}

The relationship between types (char) and (wchar_t) is difficult to manage; for example, the C language standard does not specify the exact type for (wchar_t) which can be 2 or 4 bytes wide (or even a single byte). This passage, taken from [WIKI-2012e], describes some of the complexities:

"ANSI/ISO C leaves the semantics of the wide character set to the specific implementation but requires that the characters from the portable C execution set correspond to their wide character equivalents by zero extension."

Moreover, type (char) can be either (signed char) or (unsigned char). As most format picture clauses for mnyfmt() use only characters form the 103 portable character set, which the POSIX standard requires to be present in any character set, the easier path to follow is to use the (char) type for picture clauses and a direct conversion into (wchar_t) wherever it is needed, as shown in Figure 10.

{{  // test.minus.max
    long long_min = -LONG_MAX-1;
    assertTrue( long_min<0 );
    long_min = -long_min;
    assertTrue( long_min<0 && "?????" );
    assertTrue( long_min == -long_min );
}}

Most processors use 2's complement binary arithmetic that behaves strangely in the smallest negative value, as it is shown in Figure 11. This is why mnyfmt() fails to calculate the correct formatted result for this case (and returns a null pointer).

{{  // test.stop
    char *sgn, fmtstr[96];

    strcpy(            fmtstr ,  "999,999.9999919,one9." );
    if (( sgn = mnyfmt(      fmtstr , '.', 2455,87 ) )) {
        if ( (*sgn=='-') && (','==*(sgn+1)) ) { ++sgn; *sgn='-'; }
        assertTrue( eqstr( fmtstr ,  "002,455.0008719,one9." ) );
        assertTrue( eqstr( sgn    ,    "2,455.0008719,one9.") );
    }
}}

The behavior of mnyfmt() is different when formatting the integer instead of the fractional part of the number because all leading non significant format characters in the integer part get replaced by character '0', but only those that immediately follow the decimal separator get changed. This is why in Figure 12 the character '1' in the format string stops the substitution leaving the remaining format characters unchanged. This code also shows a bad programming practice as there is no check to ensure that variable sgn is not null. This is an error that can cause a program failure when the null pointer returned by mnyfmt() gets used to change a value in memory. Enclosing every invocation to mnyfmt() in and if(){} statement is necessary to avoid this pitfall.

{{  // test.rupee
    char *sgn, fmtstr[96]; char *p;

    strcpy( fmtstr     , "99,99,99,99,99,99,99,999.99" );
    //   LONG_LONG_MAX == 92,23,37,20,36,85,47,758.07
    //                                 3,25,84,729.25
    //       19 digits:   12 34 56 78 90 12 34 567 89

    if (( sgn = mnyfmt( fmtstr , '.' ,   32584729,25 ) )) {
        assertTrue( eqstr( sgn ,      "3,25,84,729.25" ));
    }

    strcpy( fmtstr,"99,99,99,99,99 crores 99 lakhs 99,999 rupees.99 paise" );
    if (( sgn = mnyfmt( fmtstr , '.' ,       32584729,25 ) )) {
        for ( p=sgn; *p!='.'&&*p!=0; ++p ) {} // advance p to dec '.'
        *p = ' '; // blank the dot: "rupees" ==> "rupees "
    }
    assertTrue( eqstr( sgn , "3 crores 25 lakhs 84,729 rupees 25 paise" ));

    // Rp3,25,84,729.25 is read as three crore(s), twenty-five lakh(s),
    // eighty-four thousand, seven hundred and twenty-nine rupees and
    // twenty-five paise.
    // - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_rupee#Numeral_system
}}

The example in Figure 13 shows that a picture clause can be used to format rupee [(  )] amounts where words are also included. This code looks for the decimal separator '.' and replaces it with a blank space ' ' to achieve a more convincing result.

{{  // test.times
    char *sgn, fmtstr[96];

    strcpy(                fmtstr ,     "99/99/9999" );
    if (( sgn = mnyfmt(    fmtstr , 000,  9272002,0 ) )) {
        assertTrue( eqstr( fmtstr ,     "09/27/2002" ) );
        assertTrue( eqstr(    sgn ,      "9/27/2002" ) );
    }
    strcpy(                fmtstr ,     "99:99:99" );
    if (( sgn = mnyfmt(    fmtstr , '?',  21435,0 ))) {
        assertTrue( eqstr( fmtstr ,     "02:14:35") );
        assertTrue( eqstr(    sgn ,      "2:14:35") );
    }
}}

Picture clauses can be used to format almost any type of numeric values. In Figure 14 shows how to handle dates and hours, but many more applications are possible. First, the decimal separator used is (octal number) zero. In the second example, mnyfmt() uses the end of string character '\0' as decimal separator because the question mark '?' does not appear in the format string.

{{  // test.no.strcpy
    char *sgn, fmtstr[96];

    strcpy(                    fmtstr ,      "9,999." );
    if (( sgn = mnyfmt(        fmtstr , '.' , 2455,0 ) )) {
        assertTrue(  eqstr(       sgn ,      "2,455." ) );
    }

    if (( sgn = mnyfmt(        fmtstr , '.' , 1400,0  ) )) {
        // never executed: missing strcpy()
        // no char in "2,455." is a format char
    }
    else {
        assertFalse( eqstr(    fmtstr ,      "1,400." ) );
        assertTrue(  eqstr(    fmtstr ,      "2,455." ) ); // ???
        assertTrue(  "BEWARE: missing strcpy()" ); // ???
        {
            strcpy(            fmtstr ,      "9,999." );
            sgn = mnyfmt(      fmtstr , '.' , 1400,0  );
            assertTrue( eqstr(    sgn ,      "1,400." ) );
        }
    }
}}

Figure 15 illustrates a possible mistake any programmer could incur on: failure to copy the format string into the formatting variable before invoking mnyfmt(). Many programmers will choose to place their currency formatting logic inside functions that are tailored to each application in order to prevent mistakes like this one, which are simple to fix, but could be difficult to spot in a big program.

The double parentheses in the if(){} statement that contains the invocation to mnyfmt() might seem odd, but it is a good programming practice suggested by the compiler: "warning: suggest parentheses around assignment used as truth value".

/* good */   if  ( sgn = mnyfmt( fmtstr , '.', 2455,87 ) )  { // ...
/* BETTER */ if (( sgn = mnyfmt( fmtstr , '.', 2455,87 ) )) { // ...

It is easier for me to use the '9' digit as the format character for mnyfmt(), because it functions as digit '9' in a Cobol picture clause. However, someone might want to change it to '#' or to '@'. This requires recompilation to change the value for macro mnyfmt_format_char defined in header file mnyfmt.h (the test cases should also be changed accordingly). There is no danger of losing the source code for this implementation, as it is on the public domain under the Boost.org license:

http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt

These programs compile correctly using either the C or the C++ compiler. To compile the C source using the C++ compiler, override the file's extension (the GNU gcc compiler does this with option -x: gcc -x c++).

Conclusions   

Function mnyfmt() does the job because good enough currency formatting can be done with it. Further internationalization can be dealt with using a library like ISOMON that provides simple access to ISO currency data [Castedo-2012]. A C++ programmer can choose to pack mnyfmt()inside a more sophisticated std::string<> function because picture clauses require a little bit of care:

• Make sure that the format character array is big enough to hold the format string:
  if ( sizeof(fmtstr) <= 1+strlen("999.999.999") ) { // error ...
• Remember to copy the format string into the format array:
  strcpy(fmtstr,"999.999.999");
• Always check the returned value to avoid dereferencing a null pointer:
  if (( sgn = mnyfmt( fmtstr , '.' , 1400,87 ) )) { // ...
• Remember that negative numbers sometimes have the '-' sign before a comma or a dot.
  if ( (*sgn=='-') && (','==*(sgn+1)) ) { ++sgn; *sgn='-'; }
   "-,102,455.87" → "-102,455.87"
if ( (*sgn=='-') && ('.'==*(sgn+1)) ) { ++sgn; *sgn='-'; }
• Never use negative numbers for the fractional part:
  if (( sgn = mnyfmt( fmtstr , '.' , 1400,-1 ) )) { // BOOMMM!!!
• Be careful when rounding. Maybe it is a good idea to take a look into [Goldberg-1991].

  /// Round to integer, rounding halfway cases away from zero
  double round(double val) { // unbiased rounding
  //   return ( (val>0.0) ? floor(val+0.5) :  ceil(  val-0.5) );
       return ( (val>0.0) ? floor(val+0.5) : -floor(-val+0.5) );
  }
  

Aknowledgments   

      Alejandro Di Mare, Miguel Angel Prieto and David Chaves made valuable suggestions that helped improve earlier versions of this work. The spelling and grammar were checked using the http://spellcheckplus.com/ tool. The Graduate Program in Computación e Informática, the Escuela de Ciencias de la Computación e Informática and the Universidad de Costa Rica provided funding for this research.

Source code   

mnyfmt.zip source code:

http://www.di-mare.com/adolfo/p/mnyfmt/mnyfmt.zip

mnyfmt(): A simple function to format money or currency amounts

[.h.html.c] [.h][.c] [.h.txt.c]

http://www.di-mare.com/adolfo/p/mnyfmt/mnyfmt_8c.html

mnyfmtts(): test→mnyfmt():

[html...txt...c]

http://www.di-mare.com/adolfo/p/mnyfmt/mnyfmtts_8c.html

uUnit.h: assertTrue() && assertFalse()

[html...txt...h]

http://www.di-mare.com/adolfo/p/mnyfmt/uUnit_8h.html

---

gcov instruction coverage:

http://www.di-mare.com/adolfo/p/mnyfmt/gcov

---

Doxygen:

ftp://ftp.stack.nl/pub/users/dimitri/doxygen-1.7.5.1-setup.exe

References   

Indice   

[-]	Abstract
[1]	Introduction
[2]	Simpler is better
[3]	Further details
[4]	Conclusions
[5]	Aknowledgments
[6]	Source code
	Bibliografía
	Indice
	Acerca del autor
	Acerca de este documento
	Principio Indice Final

Acerca del autor   

Adolfo Di Mare <adolfo@di-mare.com>

Acerca de este documento   

Referencia:	Di Mare, Adolfo: mnyfmt.c: A simple function to format money or currency amounts, Technical Report 2012-02-ADH, Escuela de Ciencias de la Computación e Informática, Universidad de Costa Rica, 2012.
Internet:	http://www.di-mare.com/adolfo/p/mnyfmt.htm       Google™ Translate http://www.di-mare.com/adolfo/p/mnyfmt.pdf       Google™ Translate http://www.di-mare.com/adolfo/p/mnyfmt/mnyfmt.zip
See Also:	http://www.drdobbs.com/cpp/232700238 http://www.drdobbs.com/article/print?articleId=232700238
Autor:	Adolfo Di Mare <adolfo@di-mare.com>
Contacto:	Apdo 4249-1000, San José Costa Rica Tel: (506) 2511-8000       Fax: (506) 2438-0139
Revisión:	ECCI-UCR, October 2012
Visitantes: