Javascript: Words to numbers

Question

How can I convert words to numbers in JavaScript?

Example: "Nineteen days from now" would become "19 days from now".

I'm fine with using jQuery or another library - hopefully a smallish one if it's not jQuery.

What about punctuation, e.g., "twenty-two" versus "twenty two". What about "I like cookies: I ate one-hundred and twenty were left over for later." (Which should obviously be "...I ate 100 and 20 were left...", not "...I ate 120 were left...".) What I'm saying is it could be difficult if not impossible to identify exactly which parts of the string form discrete numbers. Unless there is a very restricted range of numbers to identify, e.g., just zero through twenty or something like that... — nnnnnn, Aug 16 '12 at 03:39
Nope, no homework or job interviews. It's **summer**! That eliminates a homework assignment. Plus, I was tired, and couldn't find anything else that did the job, and got stuck when trying to write my own (it broke half the time, part of which I suspect is a Chrome bug) Plus, there's @nnnnnn's comment and a few other issues inherent in parsing text. — JavaAndCSharp, Aug 16 '12 at 13:04
You can use an object in a function where you pass in the string as an argument and return the corresponding value. For example function function word(s) { let obj = { 'zero': 0 }; return obj[s] } — nCardot, Sep 14 '21 at 04:40

score 25 · Answer 1 · edited Feb 28 '19 at 18:24

Here's my JavaScript replacement of @Greg Hewgill's Python module, minus the testing from the bottom of the code:

var Small = {
    'zero': 0,
    'one': 1,
    'two': 2,
    'three': 3,
    'four': 4,
    'five': 5,
    'six': 6,
    'seven': 7,
    'eight': 8,
    'nine': 9,
    'ten': 10,
    'eleven': 11,
    'twelve': 12,
    'thirteen': 13,
    'fourteen': 14,
    'fifteen': 15,
    'sixteen': 16,
    'seventeen': 17,
    'eighteen': 18,
    'nineteen': 19,
    'twenty': 20,
    'thirty': 30,
    'forty': 40,
    'fifty': 50,
    'sixty': 60,
    'seventy': 70,
    'eighty': 80,
    'ninety': 90
};

var Magnitude = {
    'thousand':     1000,
    'million':      1000000,
    'billion':      1000000000,
    'trillion':     1000000000000,
    'quadrillion':  1000000000000000,
    'quintillion':  1000000000000000000,
    'sextillion':   1000000000000000000000,
    'septillion':   1000000000000000000000000,
    'octillion':    1000000000000000000000000000,
    'nonillion':    1000000000000000000000000000000,
    'decillion':    1000000000000000000000000000000000,
};

var a, n, g;

function text2num(s) {
    a = s.toString().split(/[\s-]+/);
    n = 0;
    g = 0;
    a.forEach(feach);
    return n + g;
}

function feach(w) {
    var x = Small[w];
    if (x != null) {
        g = g + x;
    }
    else if (w == "hundred") {
        g = g * 100;
    }
    else {
        x = Magnitude[w];
        if (x != null) {
            n = n + g * x
            g = 0;
        }
        else { 
            alert("Unknown number: "+w); 
        }
    }
}

I got hung up a bit on the RegEx-ing and the for-each bug in IE, but here it is. A fairly decent conversion from Python to JavaScript, if I can say so myself, which I can't. It needs some work - "One hundred and twenty" won't work - but it's good enough for now. Of course, thanks to @Greg Hewgill for the original, written in Python.

I just noticed that "sextillion" was spelled incorrectly in my code. I've changed it on github. — Greg Hewgill, Aug 19 '12 at 20:05
This doesn't work correctly if you have text with multiple numbers (e.g. "Nineteen days to my desired million"); — Nik Sumeiko, Dec 03 '14 at 17:08
doesn't work if the number is "million" instead of "one million" — luke_mclachlan, Jan 26 '18 at 11:38
However what I have done is to add `'a': 1`, to the Small list :-) Thanks for your effort. — luke_mclachlan, Jan 26 '18 at 12:24

score 10 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 09 '16 at 14:33

10

This is an (really) old thread but if somebody else stumbles across I have made a node module inspired by the answers above that does all the above which can also:

handle dashes and commas
match multiple numbers in a string
fuzzy match the number words
interpret decimal places

Here's the link: Words To Numbers

answered Aug 09 '16 at 14:33

Finn Fitzsimons

324
3
10

I cannot install this package on my machine... – Akhil Soman Oct 12 '17 at 06:24
it works I assure you - can you create a ticket here? https://github.com/finnfiddle/words-to-numbers/issues – Finn Fitzsimons Oct 13 '17 at 13:28
1

This looks awesome! Does it include a way to get the number values, rather than just converting the string? Something like `wordsToNumbers(“boil ten eggs for five minutes”).getValues() // returns [10, 5]` – Jonathan Tuzman Apr 19 '20 at 17:50

score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 16 '12 at 02:54

5

I wrote a little module for Python that does this: https://github.com/ghewgill/text2num/blob/master/text2num.py

It should be straightforward to convert that to Javascript.

answered Aug 16 '12 at 02:54

Greg Hewgill

951,095
183
1,149
1,285

1

Awesome, thanks. I'll post something here as an answer when I've converted it, which shouldn't be long. – JavaAndCSharp Aug 16 '12 at 14:08

Javascript: Words to numbers

3 Answers3

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