Question

I am trying to multiply a double value by -1 to get the negative value. It continues to give me a positive value

EDIT: I am putting all the code up.

public class DecToTime {

public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {

    DecToTime dtt = new DecToTime();    
    double val = dtt.getNumber("13.930000000000E+02");
    System.out.println(val);

  }

public double getNumber(String number) throws IOException{

    StringReader reader = new StringReader(number);
    int c;
    String mantissa="";
    String sign="";
    String exponent="";
    boolean isMantissa=true;

    while((c = reader.read()) != -1) {
        char character = (char) c;
      if(character=='E'){
          isMantissa=false;  
      }
      if(isMantissa==true){
          mantissa=mantissa+character;
      }

      if(isMantissa==false){
          if((character=='+')|| (character=='-')){
              if(character=='+') {
                  sign = "plus";
              }
              if(character=='-') {
                  sign = "minus";
              }
          }
          if(!(sign.equals(""))){
              exponent=exponent+character;
          }
      }

    }
    System.out.println(mantissa+" - "+sign+" - "+exponent);
    double man = Double.parseDouble(mantissa);
    double exp;
    if(sign.equals("plus")){
        exp = Double.parseDouble(exponent);
    }
    else {
        exp = Double.parseDouble(exponent);
System.out.println("Exp: "+exponent);
    }   
    System.out.println(man+" - "+sign+" - "+exp);
    double value = man*Math.pow(10, exp);
    return value;
}

}

The printed result is

13.93 – minus – 2.0

which is correct except that 2.0 should be -2.0

Answer 1

I suspect that in the else branch, the parsed value of exp is already negative, so negating it results in the positive value you see. Try printing out its value before the negation.

It would certainly help us (and you) if you showed / printed the original value of exponent though.