41

I want to divide two Integers and get a BigDecimal back in Kotlin.

E.g. 3/6 = 0.500000.

I've tried some solutions, like:

val num = BigDecimal(3.div(6))
println("%.6f".format(num))

// The result is: 0.000000

but none of them solve my problem.

Ola Ström
  • 4,136
  • 5
  • 22
  • 41
Alif Al-Gibran
  • 1,166
  • 1
  • 13
  • 24

3 Answers3

76

3 and 6 are both Int, and dividing one Int by another gives an Int: that's why you get back 0. To get a non-integer value you need to get the result of the division to be a non-integer value. One way to do this is convert the Int to something else before dividing it, e.g.:

val num = 3.toDouble() / 6

num will now be a Double with a value of 0.5, which you can format as a string as you wish.

Yoni Gibbs
  • 6,518
  • 2
  • 24
  • 37
4

You might have better luck with:

val num = 3.toBigDecimal().divide(6.toBigDecimal())
println(num)
// prints 0.5

You have to convert both numbers to BigDecimal for the method to work. This will show the exact quotient, or throw an exception if the exact quotient cannot be represented (ie a non-terminating decimal).

You can set the scale and rounding mode as follows:

val num = 3.toBigDecimal().divide(6.toBigDecimal(), 4, RoundingMode.HALF_UP)
println(num)
// prints 0.5000

Link to reference article

Derrick
  • 75
  • 7
1

Dividing Int by Int will give Int result only. To get float result , you need to convert one of the number to float.

You can use toFloat() function also.

var result = Int.toFloat() / Int

theDev
  • 11
  • 3