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What is the difference between atol() & strtol()?
According to their man pages, they seem to have the same effect as well as matching arguments:
long atol(const char *nptr);
long int strtol(const char *nptr, char **endptr, int base);
In a generalized case, when I don't want to use the base argument (I just have decimal numbers), which function should I use?
Though the question is old, the content is not as it is about an integral part of the language.
Other answers fail to emphasize two important detail: Both atol and strl will do the same thing but atol tries to parse only a base 10 format (signs
and digits) and will give no error.
While strtol (and all strto_ that return integer type) can fetch a number in any base ranging from 2 to 36, all ato_ functions (atoi, atol) will fetch only base 10.
Both will return zero (0) if no parse is possible, yet strtol can give the location where parse is ended and an error if the number was too big/small.
side note: any strto_ or ato_ that returns a decimal number uses base 10, meaning digits and a few other characters to represent a floating-point number.
