What is truncation in Java?

The English meaning of truncate is to trim or prune, or cut something and the process of trimming is called truncation. In the computer science field, the term is often used in reference to data-types or variables (like String, floating-point numbers, etc.). It is a way of approximation. Let's discuss what is truncation in Java and how can we truncate a floating or double-type number through a Java program.

Truncation

In Java programming, truncation means to trim some digits of a float or double-type number or some characters of a string from the right. We can also truncate the decimal portion completely that makes it an integer. Remember that after truncation, the number will not be round to its nearest value. Hence, truncation is a way of approximation.

It is usually used in computing (especially in database and programming) when division is done with integers and the results must be an integer.

Note: Truncation and rounding are two completely different concepts. It is not the same as Math.floor(), Math.ceil(), and Math.round() function of the Math class.

Now we have clearly understood the concept of truncation. Let's see some approaches to truncate floating or double-type numbers and string too.

Example

Suppose, a double-type number num=19.87874548973101 is given. It is required that there must be only 3 digits after the decimal point. In such cases, we apply truncation. After truncating the rest digits, we get 19.878.

If we truncate all the digits coming after decimal-point, it becomes 19. If the number has been rounded to the nearest integer it becomes 20.

Now we have clearly understood truncation. Let's see some approaches to truncate floating or double-type numbers and string too.

Approaches

There are two approaches to truncate a number:

• Using Mathematical Logic
• Using String Matching

Using Mathematical Logic

We can truncate the number by using the following steps:

1. Move the decimal of the specified number (n) to the given decimal place (dp) by multiplying the number 10^dp.
2. Determine the floor value of the resultant value (that we get from step 1).
3. Divide the floor value by 10^dp.

The value that we get from step 3, is a truncated value.

If we represent the steps above in terms of math, we get:

• n = n*pow(10,decimalplace);
• n = floor(n);
• n = n / pow(10,decimalplace);

Example: Truncate 1.231 up to 2 decimal places.

n=1.231*pow(10,2)
n=1.231*100 =123.100
n=floor(123.100) = 123
n=123/pow(10,2)
n=123/100 = 1.23

Let's implement the above logic in a Java program.

TruncationExample1.java

Output:

The number before truncation is: 19.87874548973101
The number after truncation is: 19.87874

Using String Matching

1. Convert the double or float type into String
2. Find the decimal point in the string.
3. Increment the variable (count) until we get the decimal point.
4. Store the new string and pass it to the parseDouble() method. The method returns the double value represented by the string.

The value that we get from step 4, is a truncated value.

Let's implement the above steps in a Java program.

TruncationExample2.java

Output:

The number before truncation is: 556.9871233986399
The number after truncation is: 556.987

We can also trim a string in Java. For this Java String class provides the trim() method.