com.ibm.icu.text.DecimalFormat always throws ParseException

Question

With the following code I only want to allow positive numbers. For some reason i am not even able to parse the strings correctly:

DecimalFormat dfNoNegative = new DecimalFormat("#,##0.00");
dfNoNegative.setNegativePrefix("");
try {
    System.out.println(dfNoNegative.parse("123.00"));
} catch (ParseException e) {
    System.out.println(e.getMessage());
    System.out.println(e.getErrorOffset());
    e.printStackTrace();
}

Error message and ErrorOffset:

Unparseable number: "123.00"
6

Can anyone guide me where I am mistaken? An example for a working String would be good as well

Answer 1

My mistake was to dfNoNegative.setNegativePrefix(""); to nothing (""). This doesn't work, because the String started directly with the number and 123 is not "", and therefore it fails. Basically this method overwrites what should be used as negative prefix (default is -). If you set it to ! as example, System.out.println(dfNoNegative.parse("!123.00")); would print -123.