Trying to set the decimal separator for the current language, getting “Instance is read Only”

Question

I have code that was originally written for an English language market where the decimal separator is \".\" so it\'s expecting numeric values as strings to use \".\" as the

Answer 1

You need to create a new culture and you can use the current culture as a template and only change the separator. Then you must set the current culture to your newly created one as you cannot change the property within current culture directly.

string CultureName = Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.Name;
CultureInfo ci = new CultureInfo(CultureName);
if (ci.NumberFormat.NumberDecimalSeparator != ".")
{
    // Forcing use of decimal separator for numerical values
    ci.NumberFormat.NumberDecimalSeparator = ".";
    Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = ci;
 }

Answer 2

You can use the Clone() method on the NumberFormatInfo instance, which will create a mutable version (i.e. IsReadOnly = false). You are then able set the currency symbol and/or other number format options:

string sep = "."; 
NumberFormatInfo nfi1 = (NumberFormatInfo)NumberFormatInfo.CurrentInfo.Clone();
nfi1.NumberDecimalSeparator = sep;