Mapping a numeric range onto another

Let’s forget the math and try to solve this intuitively.

First, if we want to map input numbers in the range [0, x] to output range [0, y], we just need to scale by an appropriate amount. 0 goes to 0, x goes to y, and a number t will go to (y/x)*t.

So, let’s reduce your problem to the above simpler problem.

An input range of [input_start, input_end] has input_end - input_start + 1 numbers. So it’s equivalent to a range of [0, r], where r = input_end - input_start.

Similarly, the output range is equivalent to [0, R], where R = output_end - output_start.

An input of input is equivalent to x = input - input_start. This, from the first paragraph will translate to y = (R/r)*x. Then, we can translate the y value back to the original output range by adding output_start: output = output_start + y.

This gives us:

output = output_start + ((output_end - output_start) / (input_end - input_start)) * (input - input_start)

Or, another way:

/* Note, "slope" below is a constant for given numbers, so if you are calculating
   a lot of output values, it makes sense to calculate it once.  It also makes
   understanding the code easier */
slope = (output_end - output_start) / (input_end - input_start)
output = output_start + slope * (input - input_start)

Now, this being C, and division in C truncates, you should try to get a more accurate answer by calculating things in floating-point:

double slope = 1.0 * (output_end - output_start) / (input_end - input_start)
output = output_start + slope * (input - input_start)

If wanted to be even more correct, you would do a rounding instead of truncation in the final step. You can do this by writing a simple round function:

#include <math.h>
double round(double d)
{
    return floor(d + 0.5);
}

Then:

output = output_start + round(slope * (input - input_start))

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