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.netcultureinfonumber-formatting

How to set CurrencySymbol on Readonly CultureInfo.NumberFormat?


I'm trying to format a currency (Swiss Frank -- de-CH) with a symbol (CHF) that is different that what the default .Net culture is (SFr.). The problem is that the NumberFormat for the culture is ReadOnly.

Is there a simple way to solve this problem using CultureInfo and NumberFormat? Is there some way I can override the CurrencySymbol?

Example:

Dim newCInfo As CultureInfo = CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo(2055)
newCInfo.NumberFormat.CurrencySymbol = "CHF"
MyCurrencyText.Text = x.ToString("c",newCInfo)

This will error on setting the NumberFormat.CurrencySymbol because NumberFormat is **ReadOnly**.

Thanks!


Solution

  • Call Clone on the CultureInfo, which will create a mutable version, then set the currency symbol.

    You could be more specific: fetch the NumberFormatInfo and only clone that. It's slightly more elegant, IMO, unless you need to change anything else in the culture.

    Example in C#:

    using System;
    
    using System.Globalization;
    
    class Test
    {
        static void Main()
        {
            CultureInfo original = CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo(2055);
            NumberFormatInfo mutableNfi = (NumberFormatInfo) original.NumberFormat.Clone();
            mutableNfi.CurrencySymbol = "X";
            Console.WriteLine(50.ToString("C", mutableNfi));
        }
    }