New to Java

Hi all,

Here's my riddler....

I have a matrix that stores floats. These values are read in from a text file and have the form 1.21E-5 etc. These values can range anywhere but majority of them are from E-5 to E-15. I need to display these in pico (i.e. multiply by 10 to the minus 12):

 tabel[a][8]=(float)(tabel[a][8]*Math.pow(10.0,12.0)); //change energy to pico joules

So 1.21E-12 becomes 1.21 etc. This is all done and works fine.

The problem is with numbers like 1.04E-5 becomes something like 1.04E7. So now I can't use my function to round to two dp as this number is 10400000 etc.

So my question......

I need to have a function that takes a number like 1.04E7 and changes it to the full value as a string so you get 104000000 etc. As I have a function which changes numbers to 3 significant figures based on the string value. Previous I used the following for numbers that have negative powers (E-11) etc:

temp is the value i.e. 0.0000000000245641235 etc. Decimal format rounds to 0.00000000002456 then this string value is rounded to 3 sig figs to get 0.0000000000246

java.text.DecimalFormat df = new java.text.DecimalFormat("0.00000000000000");
    String tempnum = df.format(temp);   
    tabel[curlin][7]=sigfig3(tempnum);

public float sigfig3(String tempt){
    // function to set number (in string format) to 3 sig figs    
    String news="";
    int len = tempt.length(); // length of string
    int st=0; // sig figs
    int dp=0; // decimal point found
    
    for (int a=0;a<len;a++){
        int asc =(int) tempt.charAt(a);
        if (st<3){
            if ((asc != 48) & (dp==1)){  // if not 0 and point found
            news=news+tempt.charAt(a);
            st++;   
            }
            if ((asc == 48) & (dp==1)){ // if 0 and point found
            news=news+tempt.charAt(a);   
                if (st>0){
                    st++;
                }
            }
            
            if ((asc != 48) & (dp==0)){ // if not 0 and point not found
                if (asc==46){ // if decimal point...
                    dp=1;
                    news=news+tempt.charAt(a);
                }
                else{
                news=news+tempt.charAt(a);
                st++;
                }
            }   
            
        }
        else{
        news=news+"0";
        }
    }
    float newnum = Float.parseFloat(news);
        
    return newnum;    
    }

So basically I need to change 4.56E7 to 45600000 in order to make my function work.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
John