Environment: .NET
In my last article, I presented formatting specifiers for dates and times. Format specifiers are most often used with numbers. For example, to print a decimal number to three levels of precision, you would use D3 as the specifer. The following uses this specifier within WriteLine:
System.Console.WriteLine("A Number: {0:D3}", dVar);
While numeric specifiers work with both positive and negative numbers, there are times when you want a negative number treated differently than a positive number.
The placeholder for specifying the format of a value can actually be separated into either two or three sections. If the placeholder is separated into two sections, the first is for positive numbers and zero and the second is for negative numbers. If it is broken into three sections, the first is for positive values, the middle is for negative values, and the third is for zero.
The placeholder is broken into these sections using a semicolon. The placeholder number is then included in each. For example, to format a number to print with three levels of precision when positive, five levels when negative, and no levels when zero, you do the following:
{0:D3;D5;'0'}
Listing 1 presents this example in action along with a couple of additional examples.
Listing 1 — threeway.cs.
1: // threeway.cs - Controlling the formatting of numbers
2: //----------------------------------------------------
3:
4: using System;
5:
6: class myApp
7: {
8: public static void Main()
9: {
10: Console.WriteLine("nExample 1...");
11: for ( int x = -100; x <= 100; x += 100 )
12: {
13: Console.WriteLine("{0:000;-00000;'0'}", x);
14: }
15:
16: Console.WriteLine("nExample 2...");
17: for ( int x = -100; x <= 100; x += 100 )
18: {
19: Console.WriteLine("{0:Pos: 0;Neg: -0;Zero}", x);
20: }
21:
22: Console.WriteLine("nExample 3...");
23: for ( int x = -100; x <= 100; x += 100 )
24: {
25: Console.WriteLine("{0:You Win!;You Lose!;You Broke
Even!}", x);
26: }
27: }
28: }
This listing produces the following output:
Example 1...
-00100
0
100
Example 2...
Neg: -100
Zero
Pos: 100
Example 3...
You Lose!
You Broke Even!
You Win!
This listing helps illustrate how to break the custom formatting into three pieces. A for loop is used to create a negative number, increment the number to zero, and finally increment it to a positive number. The result is that the same WriteLine can be used to display all three values. This is done three separate times for three different examples.
In line 13, you see that the positive value will be printed to at least three digits because there are three zeros in the first formatting position. The negative number will include a negative sign followed by at least 5 numbers. You know this because the dash is included in the format for the negative sign, and there are five zeros. If the value is equal to zero, a zero will be printed.
In the second example, text is included with the formatting of the numbers. This is also done in the third example. The difference is that in the second example, zero placeholders are also included so the actual numbers will print. This is not the case with the third example where only text is displayed.
As you can see by all three of these examples, it is easy to cause different formats to be used based on the sign (positive or negative) of a variable.
For More Information…
Check out my previous article on formatting dates and times. Additionally, you can get more information from my book, Sams Teach Yourself C# in 21 Days.