MIPS: How do parse out digits of a number? Basic question but yet hard.

Question

I am currently learing MIPS for a class and wrote the below sample code.

# UNTITLED PROGRAM

.data   # Data declaration section

.text

       main:      # Start of code section

               li $t1, 72
           move $a0, $t1
           li $v0,1

       exit:
              li $v0, 10
              syscall

# END OF PROGRAM

As shown the value of '72' is stored in register $t1. Now, how do I parse out the '7' and '2' out?

Answer 1

Divide by 10, the modulo is your next digit, repeat until the result of division is 0. This assuming you're not working with floating point numbers.

Answer 2

Not a mips expert... but:

72 / F = 7 "7"

7 * F = 70

72 - 70 = 2 "2"

You can apply this logic using F * (number of total digits - 1) to get each individual digit.

-r