Basic Idea
You can use common logarithm (i.e. log base 10) to evaluate the number of digits.
FLOOR(LOG(10, n))
indicates the decimal places of the first non-zero digit as follows.
SQL> WITH DATA AS ( 2 SELECT 1234 N FROM DUAL 3 UNION ALL SELECT 234 N FROM DUAL 4 UNION ALL SELECT 34 N FROM DUAL 5 UNION ALL SELECT 4 N FROM DUAL 6 --UNION ALL SELECT 0 N FROM DUAL 7 UNION ALL SELECT 0.123 N FROM DUAL 8 UNION ALL SELECT 0.0234 N FROM DUAL 9 UNION ALL SELECT 0.00345 N FROM DUAL 10 ) 11 SELECT N, FLOOR(LOG(10, N)) FROM DATA; N FLOOR(LOG(10,N)) ---------- ---------------- 1234 3 234 2 34 1 4 0 .123 -1 .0234 -2 .00345 -3
Note: LOG(10, 0) causes an error: ORA-01428: argument '0' is out of range
Therefore, you can get the value rounded to the first digit of a given number n by ROUND(n, - FLOOR(LOG(10, n)))
.
SQL> WITH DATA AS ( 2 SELECT 1234 N FROM DUAL 3 UNION ALL SELECT 234 N FROM DUAL 4 UNION ALL SELECT 34 N FROM DUAL 5 UNION ALL SELECT 4 N FROM DUAL 6 --UNION ALL SELECT 0 N FROM DUAL 7 UNION ALL SELECT 0.123 N FROM DUAL 8 UNION ALL SELECT 0.0234 N FROM DUAL 9 UNION ALL SELECT 0.00345 N FROM DUAL 10 ) 11 SELECT N, ROUND(n, - FLOOR(LOG(10, N))) FROM DATA; N ROUND(N,-FLOOR(LOG(10,N))) ---------- -------------------------- 1234 1000 234 200 34 30 4 4 .123 .1 .0234 .02 .00345 .003
In order to round to first d digits, you can modify as ROUND(n, d - FLOOR(LOG(10, n)) - 1)
.
Function
These can be summarized as the following function.
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION SIGNIFICANT_FIGURES( n NUMBER, d NUMBER ) RETURN NUMBER IS BEGIN IF n = 0 THEN RETURN 0; ELSE RETURN ROUND(n, d - FLOOR(LOG(10, n)) - 1); END IF; END;
If you want to round half to even, use ROUND_HALF_EVEN
function instead of the standard ROUND
function.
Note: From Oracle Database 18c, you can use ROUND_TIES_TO_EVEN
function.