Convert FFFFFF to decimal value (C language) - c

Question

I am trying to convert a string representing a 24-bit hexadecimal number (FFFFFF) to its decimal equivalent (-1). Could anyone help me understand why the following code does not return -1?
Thanks, LC
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main(void) {
char temp_str[] = "FFFFFF";
long value;
value = strtol(temp_str, NULL, 16);
printf("value is %ld\n", value);
}

Answer 1

It seems like your input is the 24-bit 2's complement representation of the number, but strtol does not handle negative numbers in this way (and even if it did, it has no way of knowing that you meant a 24-bit representation). It only determines the sign of its output based on the existence of a - sign.
You can modify your code to get the result you want by adding this after the strtol:
if (value > 0x7fffff)
value -= 0x1000000;
Of course, this will only work for a 24-bit representation, other sizes will need different constants.

Answer 2

Hacker's delight covers this under sign extension.
For your 24 bit number, the sign bit is the 24th bit from the right and if it was set the hex value would be 0x800000.
The book suggests these:
((x + 0x800000) & 0xFFFFFF) - 0x800000
or
((x & 0xFFFFFF) xor 0x800000) - 0x800000
From your question I would say that your number is never going to be more than 24 bits so I would use the second option in your code as follows:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main(void) {
char temp_str[] = "FFFFFF";
long value;
value = strtol(temp_str, NULL, 16);
value = (value ^ 0x800000) - 0x800000; // Notice that I'm not using the & 0xFFFFFF since I assumed that the number won't have more than 24 bits.
printf("value is %ld\n", value);
}
Edit 1:
I fear that my original answer, though technically sound did not answer the posed question.
Could anyone help me understand why the following code does not return -1?
Others have already covered this by the time I answered but I will restate it here anyway.
Your string is "FFFFFF", it consists of 6 hex digits. Each hex digit represents 4 bits, therefore your string represents a 24 bit number.
Your variable long value is of type long which normally corresponds to your CPU's word width (32bit or 64bit). Since these days long can be either 32 bits or 64 bits depending on your architecture you are not guaranteed to get -1 unless you give exactly the right number of hex digits.
If long on your machine is 32 bits then two things are true:
sizeof(long) will return 4
Using "FFFFFFFF" will return -1
If long on your machine is 64 bits then two things are true:
sizeof(long) will return 8
Using "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF" will return -1
Digression
This then lead me down a completely different path. We can generalize this and make a program that constructs a string for your machine, such that it will always return -1 from a string.
#include #include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main(void) {
const char* ff = "FF";
char temp[sizeof(long) * 2 + 1]; // Ensure that the string can store enough hex digits so that we can populate the entire width of long. Include 1 byte for '\0'
int i;
long value;
/* Fill the temp array with FF */
for (i = 0; i < sizeof(long); ++i)
{
strcpy(&temp[i * 2], ff);
}
value = strtol(temp, NULL, 16);
printf("value of %s is %ld\n", temp, value);
}
This is a bad way to get a -1 result since the clear option is to just use
long value = -1;
but I will assume that this was simply an academic exercise.

Answer 3

Don't think as a computer now, just convery (FFFFFF)16 to decimal use ordinary math thinking. This is not about two's complement negative notation.

Answer 4

Because you run this program on 32- or 64-bit machine, not 24-bit. 0xffffff is actually 0x00ffffff, which is 16777215 in decimal.
Hex representation of -1 is 0xffffffff or 0xffffffffffffffff.