String myString = "1234";
int foo = Integer.parseInt(myString);

If you look at the Java documentation you'll notice the "catch" is that this function can throw a NumberFormatException, which you can handle:

int foo;
try {
   foo = Integer.parseInt(myString);
}
catch (NumberFormatException e) {
   foo = 0;
}

(This treatment defaults a malformed number to 0, but you can do something else if you like.)

Alternatively, you can use an Ints method from the Guava library, which in combination with Java 8's Optional, makes for a powerful and concise way to convert a string into an int:

import com.google.common.primitives.Ints;

int foo = Optional.ofNullable(myString)
 .map(Ints::tryParse)
 .orElse(0)

There are multiple ways:

• String.valueOf(number) (my preference)
• "" + number (I don't know how the compiler handles it, perhaps it is as efficient as the above)
• Integer.toString(number)

• result is not zero-terminated. You should allocate one byte more.

• To my taste, there are too many allocations. Compute the required size, and allocating once. You already allocate 32 bytes per array element, so

    char * result = malloc(length * 32 + whatever_extra_space_necessary);
  

• Now recall that sprintf returns an amount of bytes it actually printed, and remove a superfluous call to strlen:

    char * where = result;
    for (size_t i = 0; i < length; i++) {
        size_t printed = sprintf(where, "%d, ", arr[i]);
        where += printed;
    }
  

• Your code prints an unpleasant ", " after the last element of an array. If it is a conscious decision, it is all right; if it is not, consider printing the first element separately:

    print("%d", arr[0]);
    for (i = 1; ....)
        print(", %d", arr[i]);
  

Normal ways would be Integer.toString(i) or String.valueOf(i).

The concatenation will work, but it is unconventional and could be a bad smell as it suggests the author doesn't know about the two methods above (what else might they not know?).

Java has special support for the + operator when used with strings (see the documentation) which translates the code you posted into:

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.append("");
sb.append(i);
String strI = sb.toString();

at compile-time. It's slightly less efficient (sb.append() ends up calling Integer.getChars(), which is what Integer.toString() would've done anyway), but it works.

To answer Grodriguez's comment: ** No, the compiler doesn't optimise out the empty string in this case - look:

simon@lucifer:~$ cat TestClass.java
public class TestClass {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    int i = 5;
    String strI = "" + i;
  }
}
simon@lucifer:~$ javac TestClass.java && javap -c TestClass
Compiled from "TestClass.java"
public class TestClass extends java.lang.Object{
public TestClass();
  Code:
   0:    aload_0
   1:    invokespecial    #1; //Method java/lang/Object."<init>":()V
   4:    return

public static void main(java.lang.String[]);
  Code:
   0:    iconst_5
   1:    istore_1

Initialise the StringBuilder:

   2:    new    #2; //class java/lang/StringBuilder
   5:    dup
   6:    invokespecial    #3; //Method java/lang/StringBuilder."<init>":()V

Append the empty string:

   9:    ldc    #4; //String
   11:    invokevirtual    #5; //Method java/lang/StringBuilder.append:
(Ljava/lang/String;)Ljava/lang/StringBuilder;

Append the integer:

   14:    iload_1
   15:    invokevirtual    #6; //Method java/lang/StringBuilder.append:
(I)Ljava/lang/StringBuilder;

Extract the final string:

   18:    invokevirtual    #7; //Method java/lang/StringBuilder.toString:
()Ljava/lang/String;
   21:    astore_2
   22:    return
}

There's a proposal and ongoing work to change this behaviour, targetted for JDK 9.

In C++11 there are some nice new convert functions from std::string to a number type.

So instead of

atoi( str.c_str() )

you can use

std::stoi( str )

where str is your number as std::string.

There are version for all flavours of numbers: long stol(string), float stof(string), double stod(string),... see http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/string/basic_string/stol