decimal - JavaScript: Rounding Down in .5 Cases

Question

I am in a situation where a JavaScript function produces numbers, such as 2.5. I want to have these point five numbers rounded down to 2, rather than the result of Math.round, which will always round up in such cases (ignoring the even odd rule), producing 2. Is there any more elegant way of doing this than subtracting 0.01 from the number before rounding? Thanks.

Answer 1

Just negate the input and the output to Math.round:

var result = -Math.round(-num);

In more detail: JavaScript's Math.round has the unusual property that it rounds halfway cases towards positive infinity, regardless of whether they're positive or negative. So for example 2.5 will round to 3.0, but -2.5 will round to -2.0. This is an uncommon rounding mode: it's much more common to round halfway cases either away from zero (so -2.5 would round to -3.0), or to the nearest even integer.

However, it does have the nice property that it's trivial to adapt it to round halfway cases towards negative infinity instead: if that's what you want, then all you have to do is negate both the input and the output:

Example:

function RoundHalfDown(num) {
  return -Math.round(-num);
}

document.write("1.5 rounds to ", RoundHalfDown(1.5), "<br>");
document.write("2.5 rounds to ", RoundHalfDown(2.5), "<br>");
document.write("2.4 rounds to ", RoundHalfDown(2.4), "<br>");
document.write("2.6 rounds to ", RoundHalfDown(2.6), "<br>");
document.write("-2.5 rounds to ", RoundHalfDown(-2.5), "<br>");