Why the value of int variable changes after converting it to string index to int?

Question

fun main(){
    val num=348597
    println(num.toString()[0].toInt())
}

I should be getting 3 as the output but I'm getting 51 instead.

Does anyone know why, or what I can do instead to get 3 as the result?

Does this answer your question? [How do I convert a Char to Int?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47592167/how-do-i-convert-a-char-to-int) — IR42, Mar 27 '20 at 04:27

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 27 '20 at 07:25

num.toString() gives you "348597". Taking [0] from it returns the first Char '3' which is a 16-bit unicode character value. Calling toInt() just converts the character value to an integer. In unicode the codepoints < 128 are the same as in ASCII and 51 is the value for the character '3'.

To get the character as a string representing "3", change toInt() to toString().

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 27 '20 at 11:29

Yo, I found the easy way how to solve this problem. I was getting 51 because I was converting char to int directly and it was returning ASCII value or shit instead. So here is the code:

fun main(){
val num=348597
//use Character.getNumericValue() instead

println(Character.getNumericValue(num.toString()[0])) }

I found the answer here.

Why the value of int variable changes after converting it to string index to int?

2 Answers2