What is a Format String?
Format strings are used to format common data types when converting them to strings. An example of this would be converting some data in an integer to a string in the format of currency. The standard numeric format strings allow us to convert numeric data to the following formats:
| Name |
Format Specifier |
| Currency |
C |
| Decimal |
D |
| Exponential |
E |
| Fixed-point |
F |
| General |
G |
| Number |
N |
| Percent |
P |
| Round-trip |
R |
| Hexadecimal |
X |
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Furthermore, there are also format strings for other types such as dates and times. Some of the datetime formats are as follows:
| Format Pattern |
Format Specifier |
| Short Date |
d |
| Long Date |
D |
| Full Date Time |
F |
| Month Day |
M |
| Short Time |
t |
| Long Time |
T |
| Month Year |
Y |
The Syntax
Let's take a look at an example in which we will convert an integer to a string with the formatting of our currency:
int intData = 123456;
//Output currency
Response.Write(intData.ToString("C"));
Response.Write("<br/>"); //new line
|
This code will output '$123,456.00'. Notice the syntax that we use for the format string. We simply call the
ToString method, pass it the format specifier, and it does the rest for us.
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Let's take a look at an example where we want to ouput a double as a string with only a specified number of decimal places:
double dblData = 12345.6789;
//Output fixed-point to specific precision
Response.Write(dblData.ToString("F3"));
Response.Write("<br/>"); //new line
|
This code will output '12345.679'. Notice, to specify the number of decimals places we simply just need to append a number to the format specifier.
Check the project source to see tons of format string examples!