Question

I need to convert two numbers to string in Objective-C.

One is a long number and the other is a float.

I searched on the internet for a solution and everyone uses stringWithFormat: but I can’t make it work.

I try

NSString *myString = [NSString stringWithFormat: @"%f", floatValue]

for 12345678.1234 and get “12345678.00000” as output

and

NSString *myString = [NSString stringWithFormat: @"%d", longValue]

Can somebody show me how to use stringWithFormat: correctly?

Answer 1

This article discusses how to use various formatting strings to convert numbers/objects into NSString instances:

String Programming Guide: Formatting String Objects

Which use the formats specified here:

String Programming Guide: String Format Specifiers

For your float, you’d want:

[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%1.6f", floatValue]

And for your long:

[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%ld", longValue] // Use %lu for unsigned longs

But honestly, it’s sometimes easier to just use the NSNumber class:

[[NSNumber numberWithFloat:floatValue] stringValue];
[[NSNumber numberWithLong:longValue] stringValue];