How do I format a number in Java?

Question

How do I format a number in Java?
What are the "Best Practices"?

Will I need to round a number before I format it?

32.302342342342343 => 32.30

.7323 => 0.73

etc.

Answer 1

From this thread, there are different ways to do this:

double r = 5.1234;
System.out.println(r); // r is 5.1234

int decimalPlaces = 2;
BigDecimal bd = new BigDecimal(r);

// setScale is immutable
bd = bd.setScale(decimalPlaces, BigDecimal.ROUND_HALF_UP);
r = bd.doubleValue();

System.out.println(r); // r is 5.12

---

f = (float) (Math.round(n*100.0f)/100.0f);

---

DecimalFormat df2 = new DecimalFormat( "#,###,###,##0.00" );
double dd = 100.2397;
double dd2dec = new Double(df2.format(dd)).doubleValue();

// The value of dd2dec will be 100.24

The DecimalFormat() seems to be the most dynamic way to do it, and it is also very easy to understand when reading others code.

Answer 2

You and String.format() will be new best friends!

https://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/api/java/util/Formatter.html#syntax

 String.format("%.2f", (double)value);

Answer 3

Be aware that classes that descend from NumberFormat (and most other Format descendants) are not synchronized. It is a common (but dangerous) practice to create format objects and store them in static variables in a util class. In practice, it will pretty much always work until it starts experiencing significant load.

Answer 4

Round numbers, yes. This is the main example source.

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import java.util.*;
import java.text.*;

public class DecimalFormatDemo {

    static public void customFormat(String pattern, double value ) {
        DecimalFormat myFormatter = new DecimalFormat(pattern);
        String output = myFormatter.format(value);
        System.out.println(value + "  " + pattern + "  " + output);
    }

    static public void localizedFormat(String pattern, double value,                                       Locale loc ) {
        NumberFormat nf = NumberFormat.getNumberInstance(loc);
        DecimalFormat df = (DecimalFormat)nf;
        df.applyPattern(pattern);
        String output = df.format(value);
        System.out.println(pattern + "  " + output + "  " + loc.toString());
    }

    static public void main(String[] args) {

        customFormat("###,###.###", 123456.789);
        customFormat("###.##", 123456.789);
        customFormat("000000.000", 123.78);
        customFormat("$###,###.###", 12345.67);
        customFormat("\u00a5###,###.###", 12345.67);

        Locale currentLocale = new Locale("en", "US");

        DecimalFormatSymbols unusualSymbols = new DecimalFormatSymbols(currentLocale);
        unusualSymbols.setDecimalSeparator('|');
        unusualSymbols.setGroupingSeparator('^');
        String strange = "#,##0.###";
        DecimalFormat weirdFormatter = new DecimalFormat(strange, unusualSymbols);
        weirdFormatter.setGroupingSize(4);
        String bizarre = weirdFormatter.format(12345.678);
        System.out.println(bizarre);

        Locale[] locales = {
            new Locale("en", "US"),
            new Locale("de", "DE"),
            new Locale("fr", "FR")
        };

        for (int i = 0; i < locales.length; i++) {
            localizedFormat("###,###.###", 123456.789, locales[i]);
        }
     }
 }

Answer 5

Try this:

String.format("%.2f", 32.302342342342343);

Simple and efficient.

Answer 6

Use DecimalFormat.

Answer 7

There are two approaches in the standard library. One is to use java.text.DecimalFormat. The other more cryptic methods (String.format, PrintStream.printf, etc) based around java.util.Formatter should keep C programmers happy(ish).

Answer 8

As Robert has pointed out in his answer: DecimalFormat is neither synchronized nor does the API guarantee thread safety (it might depend on the JVM version/vendor you are using).

Use Spring's Numberformatter instead, which is thread safe.

Answer 9

public static void formatDouble(double myDouble){
 NumberFormat numberFormatter = new DecimalFormat("##.000");
 String result = numberFormatter.format(myDouble);
 System.out.println(result);
}

For instance, if the double value passed into the formatDouble() method is 345.9372, the following will be the result: 345.937 Similarly, if the value .7697 is passed to the method, the following will be the result: .770