Converting numbers to words in document.write

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Converting numbers to words in document.write

MaxRyan

Hi all,

I've been playing about with a story generator using javascript and need to convert some numbers into words and perform some basic operations like multiplication and division within the document.write. The conversion to words is what has been giving me major problems.

I found this code for converting numbers to words but am at a complete loss as to how to implement it within document write...
http://javascript.about.com/library/bltoword.htm

a small example of how it's being used:

<script>


address1=prompt("House number (numeric)","");

document.write(" <a>"+name+"</a> didn't answer, not recognising the voice outside and silently waited. After <a>"+address1+"</a> minutes footsteps dragged themselves away from the door and the steady roar of a car on it's last legs could be heard starting up and slowly fading into the distance. ");
</script>

where address1 is the number and i need to be able to both turn into words and perform basic operations on it. Clearly I'm not the most advanced in javascript.

Completely stuck! So any help would be amazing!
THANK YOU

tenfold

You shouldn't use document.write(). It reflows the page and it's very slow. Try using

document.body.appendChild( document.createTextNode( 'hello world') );

Back to your question... basically, you use a few arrays, a multi-dimensional array, or an object to figure out the word for a number.

Here's an example for numbers 0-9:

var words = [
    'zero', 'one', 'two', 'three', 'four', 'five', 'six', 'seven', 'eight', 'nine'
];

var number = 5;

alert( words[number] );

It works because each index's value contains the indexes word (e.g., words[2] is 'two').
That's the basic idea. It gets a little complicated for numbers 10-19, but then it's easy for numbers 20 and up because you just find the prefix and then add the value.

If you tell me the max house number a user can enter, I'll write up a little example for you.

JMRKER

Modifying 'tenfold's example, here is a script for the numbers from 0-99.
Probably could be compressed a bit more, but it will at least give you an idea of the concept.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8" />

<title> Untitled </title>

</head>
<body>
<div id="test"></div>

<script type="text/javascript">
var words = [
    'zero', 'one', 'two', 'three', 'four', 'five', 'six', 'seven', 'eight', 'nine',
    'ten', 'eleven', 'twelve', 'thirthteen', 'fourteen', 'fifteen'
];

function Num2Word(N) {
  var str = '';
  if (N >= words.length) {
    if ((N > 15) && (N < 20)) { str = words[N-10]+'teen'; }
    if ((N > 19) && (N < 30)) { str = 'twenty';  if (N > 20) { str += '-'+words[N-20]; } }
    if ((N > 29) && (N < 40)) { str = 'thirty';  if (N > 30) { str += '-'+words[N-30]; } }
    if ((N > 39) && (N < 50)) { str = 'fourty';  if (N > 40) { str += '-'+words[N-40]; } }
    if ((N > 49) && (N < 60)) { str = 'fifty';   if (N > 50) { str += '-'+words[N-50]; } }
    if ((N > 59) && (N < 70)) { str = 'sixty';   if (N > 60) { str += '-'+words[N-60]; } }
    if ((N > 69) && (N < 80)) { str = 'seventy'; if (N > 70) { str += '-'+words[N-70]; } }
    if ((N > 79) && (N < 90)) { str = 'eighty';  if (N > 80) { str += '-'+words[N-80]; } }
    if ((N > 89) && (N < 100)) { str = 'ninety'; if (N > 90) { str += '-'+words[N-90]; } }
  } else { str = words[N]; }
  return str;
};

var numbers = [ ];  for (var i=0; i<100; i++) { numbers.push(i); }

var str = '';
for (var i=0; i<numbers.length; i++) { str += numbers[i] + ' = ' + Num2Word(numbers[i]) + '<br>'; }
document.getElementById('test').innerHTML = str;
</script>

</body>
</html>

JMRKER

Another version to display 0 to 9999.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8" />

<title> Untitled </title>

</head>
<body>
<div id="test"></div>

<script type="text/javascript">
var words = [
    'zero', 'one', 'two', 'three', 'four', 'five', 'six', 'seven', 'eight', 'nine',
    'ten', 'eleven', 'twelve', 'thirteen', 'fourteen', 'fifteen', 'sixteen', 'seventeen', 'eighteen', 'nineteen'
];

function Num2Word(N) {
  var str = '';
  if (N >= words.length) {
    if ((N >= 1000) && (N < 10000)) { n = parseInt(N/1000); str += words[n]+'-thousand '; N -= n * 1000; }
    if ((N >= 100)  && (N < 1000) ) { n = parseInt(N/100); str += words[n]+'-hundred '; N -= n * 100; }
    if ((N > 0)  && (N < 20)) { str += words[N]; }
    if ((N > 19) && (N < 30)) { str += 'twenty';  if (N > 20) { str += '-'+words[N-20]; } }
    if ((N > 29) && (N < 40)) { str += 'thirty';  if (N > 30) { str += '-'+words[N-30]; } }
    if ((N > 39) && (N < 50)) { str += 'fourty';  if (N > 40) { str += '-'+words[N-40]; } }
    if ((N > 49) && (N < 60)) { str += 'fifty';   if (N > 50) { str += '-'+words[N-50]; } }
    if ((N > 59) && (N < 70)) { str += 'sixty';   if (N > 60) { str += '-'+words[N-60]; } }
    if ((N > 69) && (N < 80)) { str += 'seventy'; if (N > 70) { str += '-'+words[N-70]; } }
    if ((N > 79) && (N < 90)) { str += 'eighty';  if (N > 80) { str += '-'+words[N-80]; } }
    if ((N > 89) && (N < 100)) { str += 'ninety'; if (N > 90) { str += '-'+words[N-90]; } }
  } else { str = words[N]; }
  return str;
};

var s=0;     var e=100;
// var s=100;   var e=200;    // other test values
// var s=9000;  var e=10000;  // more test values 
var numbers = [ ];  for (var i=s; i<e; i++) { numbers.push(i); }

var str = '';
for (var i=0; i<numbers.length; i++) { str += numbers[i] + ' = ' + Num2Word(numbers[i]) + '<br>'; }
document.getElementById('test').innerHTML = str;
</script>

</body>
</html>

tenfold

@JMRKER: You have a spelling error in your code :p (thirthteen).

[HR][/HR]
@MaxRyan: I made a little code for you. It only handles numbers up to one million, but that should be fine for house numbers, lol.
http://pastebin.com/hhA9r0MZ

You can test it like this:

alert( num2word( prompt('Enter a number below one million.', '') ) );

It can take a number or a string as an argument, so prompt() will work fine with it.
It converts all strings/numbers to base10 numbers, so sending it '0100' or '100x' should be fine, too.

Also, it's surprisingly easy to raise the max number it can take.

007Julien

It's not a problem to convert numbers to string or to count with European numbers

jalarie

http://spruce.flint.umich.edu/~jalarie/jaa_ub.htm#a:NumWord

The above link can convert numbers to and from words as large as nine hundred duotrigintillion and as small as hundred quadrillionths. That should keep you out of mischief for a minute or two.

tenfold

@jalarie: He wants to do it in his script automatically, not manually.

jalarie

tenfold;1282799 wrote:
@jalarie: He wants to do it in his script automatically, not manually.

I understand that. The quoted URL is to a page that uses a pair of JavaScript functions to do exactly that. If he's interested, I'll arrange a copy of those functions to him. He could then place function calls in his page to do what he wants.

tenfold

I thought you would say that. It makes sense, but aren't those functions pretty big? This guy only needs to go up to like 1,000; maybe 10,000 but I doubt it.

007Julien

Here is an excerpt of my script for Great Britain. Its cut the number in triplets and use the replace method with function not to replace but to define the word string... Its give a short but compact script.

function triplets(n){var c='',m=0;
    if (100<=n) {m=Math.floor(n/100);c+=triplets(m)+' hundred';n-=m*100}
    n.toString().replace(/^[2-9](?=\d)/,function(a){
        c+=(m?'  and ':' ')+('twenty,thirty,forty,fifty,sixty,seventy,eighty,ninety'.split(',')[a-2]);n-=(+a)*10});
    if (n==0) return c;else if (c && n<10) c+='-';
    return c+' '+'one,two,three,four,five,six,seven,eight,nine,ten,eleven,twelve,thirteen,fourteen,fifteen,sixteen,seventeen,eighteen,nineteen'.split(',')[n-1];
}
function anyNumber(n){var lng,isS,chn='';
    wds=',thousand,million,thousand million'.split(',');
    n.toString().replace(/(\d{1,3})(?=((\d\d\d)*)$)/g,function(a,b,c){ 
       lng=c.toString().length/3;
       isS=triplets(m=a.replace(/^0+/,''));
       if (isS) chn+=((!lng) && m<100 && /thousand$/.test(chn)?' and ':' ')+isS.replace(/- /g,'-')+' '+wds[lng];
    });
    return chn.replace(/\s+/g,' ');
}
[COLOR="#0000FF"]// Use [/COLOR]
alert(anyNumber(897563))

The script is made for positive numbers (0 give an empty string) less than 1,000,000,000,000 which should be enough by choosing well units...
For USA replace the thousand million by billion and remove the word and.
Unless I'm mistaken ?

jalarie

tenfold;1282843 wrote:
I thought you would say that. It makes sense, but aren't those functions pretty big? This guy only needs to go up to like 1,000; maybe 10,000 but I doubt it.

The base code is what it is. To get the larger numbers, I just had to add to the end of:

    NW_Names=new Array('','Thousand','Million','Billion',
      'Trillion','Quadrillion','Quintillion','Sextillion',
      'Septillion','Octillion','Nonillion','Decillion',
      'Undecillion','Duodecillion','Tredecillion',
      'Quattuordecillion','Quindecillion','Sexdecillion',
      'Septendecillion','Octodecillion','Novemdecillion',
      'Vigintillion','unvigintillion','duovigintillion',
      'trevigintillion','quattuorvigintillion','quinvigintillion',
      'sexvigintillion','septenvigintillion','octovigintillion',
      'novemvigintillion','trigintillion','untrigintillion',
      'duotrigintillion'
    );

007Julien

Congratulations. Its a very good linguistic work...
And it is even more beautiful than it is, as the Eiffel tower, totally useless !

jalarie

007Julien;1282965 wrote:
Congratulations. Its a very good linguistic work...
And it is even more beautiful than it is, as the Eiffel tower, totally useless !

It's not TOTALLY useless; it has two interesting facets:

It demonstrates easy expandability. The routine is written in such a way that the base code does not need to be changed to add functionality. I agree that having that many digits is probably not needed, but the lesson is there none the less.
It provoked a response from you. Good to hear from you!