Hello Everybody:
I'm importing a csv file in C#, sometimes with '.', sometimes with ',' as decimal separator.
Is there a best way of determinate the decimal separator better than counting from the last char down to the first apperance?
Thanks in advance.
Franklin Albricias.
Why not use both as a separator?
Have a look at NumberFormatInfo
Edit:
For each value try to parse it with one of the separators.
If that fails try to parse it with the other.
This depends on the actual data stored in the csv file and the data separation character (';' or ',' or ' ').
If all data is always in floting point notation you can use a regular expression that checks both cases. You can use "d+,\d+" to check for values separated by ',' or "\d+\.\d+" for values using '.' as separator
If you know the correct culture in advance (for example, because you know the user that created the file), you can try to parse the provided value using the appropriate CultureInfo or NumberFormatInfo:
Decimal value = Decimal.Parse(input, new CultureInfo("es-ES"));
But if the type is not known in advance, you'll have to check it manually by examining the characters until you find a separator. (And even that approach assumes that you are guaranteed to always have a decimal separator, such that one is written as 1.0 rather than 1.)
You can't just try each expected format one after the other because you may get false positives.
10,000 means something valid but different for both formats.
Under the assumption that the file contains only numbers - no strings and what ever - and there are at least two columns, you can do the following.
Go through the first line and look for a semicolon. If you find one, you have semicolon separated numbers with commas as decimal separator, else comma separated numbers with points as decimal separator.
In all other cases you will have to use a heuristic (and sometimes get the wrong conclusion) or you have to strictly parse the file under both assumptions.