Decimal to string with thousand's separators?

Question

Consider a Decimal value:

Decimal value = -1234567890.1234789012M;

i want to convert this Decimal value to a stri

Answer 1

You need to include the culture when formatting for your strings. You can either use String.Format and include the culture as the first parameter or use the object's ToString method and use the overload that takes a culture.

The following code produces the expected output (except for gws-FR, it couldn't find a culture with that string).

namespace CultureFormatting {
  using System;
  using System.Globalization;

  class Program {
    public static void Main() {
      Decimal value = -1234567890.1234789012M;
      Print("en-US", value);
      Print("ca-ES", value);
      //print("gws-FR", value);
      Print("fr-CH", value);
      Print("ar-DZ", value);
      Print("prs-AF", value);
      Print("ps-AF", value);
      Print("as-IN", value);
      Print("lo-LA", value);
      Print("qps-PLOC", value);
    }

    static void Print(string cultureName, Decimal value) {
      CultureInfo cultureInfo = new CultureInfo(cultureName);
      cultureInfo.NumberFormat.NumberDecimalDigits = 10;
      // Or, you could replace the {1:N} with {1:N10} to do the same
      // for just this string format call.
      string result = 
        String.Format(cultureInfo, "{0,-8} {1:N}", cultureName, value);
      Console.WriteLine(result);
    }
  }
}

The above code produces the following output:

en-US    -1,234,567,890.1234789012
ca-ES    -1.234.567.890,1234789012
fr-CH    -1'234'567'890.1234789012
ar-DZ    1,234,567,890.1234789012-
prs-AF   1.234.567.890,1234789012-
ps-AF    1،234،567،890,1234789012-
as-IN    -1,23,45,67,890.1234789012
lo-LA    (1234567,890.1234789012)
qps-PLOC --12,,3456,,7890..1234789012

If you're working with a multithreaded system, such as ASP.Net, you can change the thread's CurrentCulture property. Changing the thread's culture will allow all of the associated ToString and String.Format calls to use that culture.

Update

Since you're wanting to display all of the precision you're going to have to do a bit of work. Using NumberFormat.NumberDecimalDigits will work, except that if the value has less precision, the number will output with trailing zeros. If you need to make sure you display every digit without any extras, you will need to calculate the precision beforehand and set that before you convert it to a string. The StackOverflow question Calculate System.Decimal Precision and Scale may be able to help you determine the precision of the decimal.