Best way to display decimal without trailing zeroes

Question

Is there a display formatter that will output decimals as these string representations in c# without doing any rounding?

// decimal -> string

20 -> 20         


        

Answer 1

Extension method:

public static class Extensions
{
    public static string TrimDouble(this string temp)
    {
        var value = temp.IndexOf('.') == -1 ? temp : temp.TrimEnd('.', '0');
        return value == string.Empty ? "0" : value;
    }
}

Example code:

double[] dvalues = {20, 20.00, 20.5, 20.5000, 20.125, 20.125000, 0.000};
foreach (var value in dvalues)
    Console.WriteLine(string.Format("{0} --> {1}", value, value.ToString().TrimDouble()));

Console.WriteLine("==================");

string[] svalues = {"20", "20.00", "20.5", "20.5000", "20.125", "20.125000", "0.000"};
foreach (var value in svalues)
    Console.WriteLine(string.Format("{0} --> {1}", value, value.TrimDouble()));

Output:

20 --> 20
20 --> 20
20,5 --> 20,5
20,5 --> 20,5
20,125 --> 20,125
20,125 --> 20,125
0 --> 0
==================
20 --> 20
20.00 --> 2
20.5 --> 20.5
20.5000 --> 20.5
20.125 --> 20.125
20.125000 --> 20.125
0.000 --> 0

Answer 2

I have end up with this variant:

public static string Decimal2StringCompact(decimal value, int maxDigits)
    {
        if (maxDigits < 0) maxDigits = 0;
        else if (maxDigits > 28) maxDigits = 28;
        return Math.Round(value, maxDigits, MidpointRounding.ToEven).ToString("0.############################", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
    }

Advantages:

you can specify the max number of significant digits after the point to display at runtime;

you can explicitly specify a round method;

you can explicitly control a culture.

Answer 3

I ended up with the following code:

    public static string DropTrailingZeros(string test)
    {
        if (test.Contains(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture.NumberFormat.NumberDecimalSeparator))
        {
            test = test.TrimEnd('0');
        }

        if (test.EndsWith(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture.NumberFormat.NumberDecimalSeparator))
        {
            test = test.Substring(0,
                test.Length - CultureInfo.InvariantCulture.NumberFormat.NumberDecimalSeparator.Length);
        }

        return test;
    }

Answer 4

I just learned how to properly use the G format specifier. See the MSDN Documentation. There is a note a little way down that states that trailing zeros will be preserved for decimal types when no precision is specified. Why they would do this I do not know, but specifying the maximum number of digits for our precision should fix that problem. So for formatting decimals, G29 is the best bet.

decimal test = 20.5000m;
test.ToString("G"); // outputs 20.5000 like the documentation says it should
test.ToString("G29"); // outputs 20.5 which is exactly what we want

Answer 5

This string format should make your day: "0.#############################". Keep in mind that decimals can have at most 29 significant digits though.

Examples:

? (1000000.00000000000050000000000m).ToString("0.#############################")
-> 1000000.0000000000005

? (1000000.00000000000050000000001m).ToString("0.#############################")
-> 1000000.0000000000005

? (1000000.0000000000005000000001m).ToString("0.#############################")
-> 1000000.0000000000005000000001

? (9223372036854775807.0000000001m).ToString("0.#############################")
-> 9223372036854775807

? (9223372036854775807.000000001m).ToString("0.#############################")
-> 9223372036854775807.000000001

Answer 6

This is yet another variation of what I saw above. In my case I need to preserve all significant digits to the right of the decimal point, meaning drop all zeros after the most significant digit. Just thought it would be nice to share. I cannot vouch for the efficiency of this though, but when try to achieve aesthetics, you are already pretty much damned to inefficiencies.

public static string ToTrimmedString(this decimal target)
{
    string strValue = target.ToString(); //Get the stock string

    //If there is a decimal point present
    if (strValue.Contains("."))
    {
        //Remove all trailing zeros
        strValue = strValue.TrimEnd('0');

        //If all we are left with is a decimal point
        if (strValue.EndsWith(".")) //then remove it
            strValue = strValue.TrimEnd('.');
    }

    return strValue;
}

That's all, just wanted to throw in my two cents.