Engineering Notation vs. Scientific Notation in C++

[ZeroSploit]

I'm studying electronics in school right now, and I want to create a program that will tell you the value of a resistor. Ive looked up a few examples to help me get an idea of how it's suppose to work, but my question is this. How can I get my program to display engineering notation.

example :
Say I have a 1K ohm resister (brown, black , red, gold (5% tolerance). How can I display the output result as being Kilo's, Mili, Mega, Pica, etc...

I haven't started the program or even a base plan yet, but I was just very curious and wanted to read up on some ideas before I get started. This isnt a class project. It's just me wanting to keep fresh on programming. I want the program to be very,very simple then work my way up to writing the same theory using more advanced technique's....

[shadowCODE]

Didn't you just display the result in "kilo's" by saying "1k ohm"?

[ZeroSploit]

as an example, yes.....that's only an example....getting the output to display up to 999 ohms is simple enough, but afterwards Id like the output to display 1k, 2mili-ohms, etc....I havent started on the code. My process, as Im sure it is with most is writing it out. I havent started on that part yet.....Its just an idea of mine to write a program that will tell me the resistor color code value....

[Jaybob66]

tally up the ohms in a consistent form, say ohms, an use a double so you can have values less that 1 (milli,pico etc).

so you could end up with 1000000.0 ohms, or 0.005 ohms.

then you just need a routine to convert those values into SI/Eng notation.

in its most simple form, it could look like this.

double ohms = 50000.0;

double mega = ohms / 1000000.0;
if (mega >= 1.0)
{
    printf ("%lf Mega ohms",mega);
}
else 
{
   double kilo = ohms / 1000.0;
   if (kilo >= 1.0)
  {
       printf ("%lf Kilo ohms",kilo);  
   }
}

after you've got the hang of that, you can start replacing code with data, like an array of the values 1000000,1000,1,0.001,0.000001 etc, mapped to the text label, and use a loop to spin through them.

but try the simple way first so you understand whats going on.

[ZeroSploit]

I'm going to do some more research,and come up with a plan. I always do it this way...start at places I don't need to then work back. I want my program to ask the user to input the colors of a 4 band resistor, 4 band resistors have a color associated with a value for each color band and a (3rd color band)multiplier. I'll show you a copy of what talking about wgwm I get home.