# Rounding numbers in a table / Truncating text in table

Is it possible to have automatic rounding of numbers in a table?

Say that I have this, made in the usual way with a tabular environment:

pi  | 3.14592654
e   | 2.7182818284
phi | 1.6180339887


Can I control how many significant digits are shown without truncating the numbers manually myself?

So for example, if I need four significant digits, the numbers should appear as

pi  | 3.1459
e   | 2.7183
phi | 1.6180


Bonus points for actually rounding the numbers according to the usual rules without simply truncating them.

I understand this is probably non-trivial, so here's a relaxed version that will also work in my circumstances (all numbers have one and the same precision and character count):

(How) Can I control how many characters are rendered in a column of a table?

So if I define the text in the columns as:

\begin{tabular} % some black magic column definition
text & alongword\\
text & anotherlongword\\
text & morelongwords\\
\end{tabular}


I'd like to get something like:

text along
text anoth
text morel


I know there are non-TeX ways to do this, and I will probably resolve to writing a script if all else fails, but I'm curious whether there's a way to do it solely with TeX & friends.

-

For numbers:

There are some packages, like siunitx and math engine of tikz (especially in pgfplotstable), which can used to format numbers in LaTeX. numprint may be the simplest one, and can be easily used in tabulars.

numprint package privides n and N column types for numbers in tabular, and \nprounddigits for set the precision. An example:

% \usepackage{numprint} in preamble
\npdecimalsign{.}
\nprounddigits{2}
\begin{tabular}{c|n{5}{2}|}
foo & 12345 \\
bar & 12345.12345 \\
baz & 0.00012345 \\
\end{tabular}
\npnoround


For common characters, @TH has showed some TeX trick. However, you can use xstring package or something else to do the dirty work. I don't know how to get full control in tabular, so here is just a incomplete solution, a mix of xtring and primitive TeX:

\halign{\StrLeft{#}{4} \cr
abc \cr
abcde \cr
abcdefg \cr
}


Any further suggestions are welcome.

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numprint is very nice! It has a lot other useful stuff that will certainly come in handy. Thanks! –  Martin Tapankov Jan 17 '11 at 12:37
How can I keep the header row text centered while using this package??? –  Daniel Aug 2 '13 at 21:08
@Daniel: For siunitx, use {header}. For other simpler packages, use \multicolumn{1}{c}{...} –  Leo Liu Aug 3 '13 at 5:07
Can I specify a different amount of rounding for each column? I can't see this in the manual. –  Aaron McDaid May 31 at 14:34

Here's one way to do it that's a bit of a hack (which is to say that Leo Liu's answer is far better, it's just fun to try to do this yourself sometimes):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{array}
\usepackage{fp}
\newcolumntype{T}{>{\trunc}r}
\def\trunc\ignorespaces#1\\{%
\FPset\a{#1}
\FPround\a\a4
\a
\\
}
\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{>{$}l<{$}T}
\pi  & 3.14159265358979323848\\
e    & 2.71828182845904523536\\
\phi & 1.61803399\\
x    & 37\\
\end{tabular}
\end{document}


The T specifier has to be at the end of the row and it must be terminated with a \\. You could write an analogous one that works in the middle of the row by delimiting it with & rather than \\.

The original version differed only in the definition of \trunc.

\def\trunc#1.#2#3#4#5#6\\{#1.#2#3#4#5\\}

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@TH: It's a pity you deleted the first tricky answer (works for any characters). It's rather valuable, even only for fun. :) –  Leo Liu Jan 17 '11 at 12:14
@Leo: There we go, I added it back. –  TH. Jan 17 '11 at 12:22
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{array,xstring}

\newcolumntype{N}{>{\GobbleA} r<{;;} }
\def\GobbleA\ignorespaces#1.#2;;{%
\ignorespaces#1.\StrLeft{#2}{4}}

\newcolumntype{S}{>{\GobbleB} l }
\def\GobbleB#1#2\\{\StrLeft{#2}{4}\\}

\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{>{$}l<{$} N S}
\pi  & 3.14159265358979323848 & delicious \\
e    & 2.71828182845904523536 & foo \\
\phi & 1.61803399             & extraordinarylong \\
x    & 37.11111               & { } \\
\end{tabular}

\end{document}


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I can't run this solution but it is particularly suitable for my problem because I see it should work using comma as separator instead of dot. However, I am getting this message everytime: ! Use of \@@array doesn't match its definition. \new@ifnextchar ...served@d = #1\def \reserved@a { #2}\def \reserved@b {#3}\f... l.207 Lys1 & 10.8 & {} & 11.4267 \\ ? –  jasikevicius23 May 21 at 21:34
complete example, please –  Herbert May 22 at 4:44