How to get floats value without including exponential notation

Question

Hello,

In C#, is it possible to perform ToString on a float and get the value without using exponentials?

For example, consider the following:

float dummy;

dummy = 0.000006F;

Console.WriteLine(dummy.ToString());

This gives the output

6E-06

However, what I was is

0.000006

The closest I could find was using the "F" qualifier, however I then need to specify the number of decimal places otherwise the value get rounded.

Is there actually a way of doing this automatically or do I need to do a load of funky logic to either trim zeroes or figure out the number of required decimals.

Thanks;
Richard Moss

Answer 1

Console.WriteLine(dummy.ToString("N5"));

where 5 its number of decimal places

Answer 2

Try this

Console.WriteLine(dummy.ToString("F"));

You can also specify number of decimal places. For example F5, F3, etc.

Also, you can check custom format specifier

Console.WriteLine(dummy.ToString("0.#########"));

Answer 3

You can use the following implementation I did?

public string GetFormattedValue(float fltParam, int numberOfDecimalPlaces)
{
    string format = "#.";
    for(int formatIndex = 0;formatIndex < numberOfDecimalPlaces;formatIndex++)
    {
        format += "#";
    }

    string strFlt = fltParam.ToString(format);

    if (strFlt.StartsWith("."))
        strFlt = "0" + newValue;
    if (strFlt.Lenght == 0)
        strFlt = "0";
    return newValue;
}

This is not the most effective code. But it will do the trick. :-).

Please also note the depending on your regional settings it might be a ',' instead of a '.'

Answer 4

       string dum = string.Format("{0:f99}",dummy).TrimEnd('0');
       if (dum.EndsWith(",")) dum = dum.Remove(dum.Length - 1);

Answer 5

Without some further background info, it's hard to tell - but it sounds like you want decimal semantics. So why not use the decimal type instead?

decimal dummy;
dummy = 0.000006M;

The decimal type is more accurate at representing decimal numbers than float or double, but it is not as performant. See here for more info.

Answer 6

float dummy = 0.000006F;
Console.WriteLine(dummy.ToString("0." + new string('#', 60)));

If you'll be doing this a lot then it makes sense to store the format string in a static field/property somewhere and re-use it, rather than constructing a new string every time:

private static readonly string _allFloatDigits = "0." + new string('#', 60);

// ...

float dummy = 0.000006F;
Console.WriteLine(dummy.ToString(_allFloatDigits));