Change NSNumberFormatter's negative format from (xxx.xx) to -xxx.xx

Question

I want to change my NSNumberformatter from displaying negative numbers with parenthesis around them to putting the minus sign in front (or whatever the localized standard is

Answer 1

If you take a look at the "Format Strings" section in the Data Formatting Programming Guide For Cocoa:

The format string uses the format patterns from the Unicode Technical Standard #35 (this reference is to version tr35-6; formatters for Mac OS X v10.4 use version tr35-4).

Edit:

If you want to set a format string based on currencies, you can use the ¤ character, for example:

[formatter setFormat:@"¤#,##0.00"];

This will add the currency symbol for the current localization in place of the ¤ character.

Therefore, applying the same concept to the negative format string:

[formatter setFormat:@"-¤#,##0.00"];

This will also apply the currency symbol in place of the ¤ for the current localization.