My Tech Notes

It appears that formatting numbers in Java is quite a challenge. Here is what I found out so far.

If you simply need to output a real value with given number of digits, the simplest way to do so would be this (make sure to import java.text.*):

DecimalFormat form = new DecimalFormat ( "0.000" ); System.out.println ( form.format(-Math.sqrt(2)));

This will print

-1.414

The most important feature of DecimalFormat() is that you can take advantage of pre-defined "factory methods", by calling functions

form = NumberFormat.getXXXInstance(locale);

where XXX is ether empty, or one of "Integer", "Currency", or "Percent".

You can also use form.parse() to parse strings in corresponding format, and form.toPattern() to access pre-defined locale-specific patterns.

See this help page for more on formats and locales.

Labels: java

# posted by Kostya @ 5:57 PM