Situation - The thread culture in my web app has been set to 'es' (Spanish)
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("es");
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("es");
The string value is "0.1" For the following expression,
var value = "0.1"
provider = CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("en-US")
double.TryParse(value.ToString(), NumberStyles.Any, provider, out number)
number returns 1.0. Which makes me think that it is picking the culture info from the thread. Not the one I provide.
The following unit test passes (as expected).
var numberInEnUS = "0.1";
var spanishCulture = CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("es");
culture = new CultureInfo("en-US", false);
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = spanishCulture;
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = spanishCulture;
double number;
double.TryParse(numberInEnUs, NumberStyles.Any, culture, out number);
Assert.AreEqual(0.1, number);
So, the question is why does double.TryParse fail in my application? Theoretically, 0.1 for Spanish is 1 (Separator for spanish is a decimal point '.'). However, number 1000.0 does not get converted to 10000. So, it seems that it fails only for 0.1 Any explanation is highly appreciated!
I finally was able to identify what was wrong. The issue was not with the TryParse() function but the ToString() function.
The value was actually a Double type, not a string as I mentioned above. (My bad, I thought it was not relevant). I was actually doing a value.ToString(). This is where it uses the thread culture and changes the value. So, if the value was 0.1, the value.ToString() changes it to "0,1". It automatically changes the decimal character based on the Thread culture. The TryParse then uses the en-US culture and convert "0,1" to 1.
To fix it, use Convert.ToString instead and pass in the culture info.
At the end, it was just a silly mistake.