Is it OK to use DecimalSeparator to force Floattostr/Strtofloat functions to use a decimal point

Question

Currently, I\'m setting DecimalSeparator to a \'.\' in each procedure which uses these functions.

It would be much easier to set this globally at the start of the pr

Answer 1

It's OK if you have no alternative. Prefer the versions of those functions that accept a TFormatSettings parameter, if your Delphi version is recent enough, so that you don't interfere with any other code that relies on that global variable for locale-aware behavior.

FloatToStr and StrToFloat are locale-sensitive functions. If you need to convert your floating-point value to a string to persist it somewhere that a program will read later (such as to a file, the registry, or a network socket), then you should use the locale-independent functions Str and Val for your conversions instead. They always use . for the decimal separator, regardless of the DecimalSeparator variable or other environmental settings.