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.

Menes

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.

Anticathexis

Thanks for this explanation. However, Intellij recommends to use Double.valueOf instead of new Double(number).doubleValue(). The last line of the last example would therefor be double dd2dec = Double.valueOf(df2.format(dd)); – Jehad

The DecimalFormat pattern in this answer is great for US, but wrong in most other locales throughout the world. The grouping character (comma in the US, but space or dot in other locales), the grouping size (threes in US and most locales, but different in India), the decimal character (dot in the US, but comma in other locales). The correct way to get a DecimalFormat instance is: DecimalFormat df = (DecimalFormat)NumberFormat.getNumberInstance(locale) – Duffer

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);

Chamkis

This answer would not have got so many upvotes if it had come from anyone else. String.format is for formatting strings, not numbers. – Fresco

Actually, String.format is like C's printf. It can format several kinds of data types. – Peterson

When you want to convert the rounded value as string, this is one of the way. Other is using DecimalFormat. And DecimalFormat is slightly faster than String.format. Simple System.currentTimeMillis diff reveals that. – Turpentine

This for only string value – Eckel

This is the best answer. While the number of digits after the decimal point is completely domain-specific, numbers need to be displayed in a locale-aware way. String.format() uses the correct number symbols and decimal character for the default locale. Even better would be to pass the required locale in as the first parameter to format() to make it explicit. – Duffer

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.

Plagiarism

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]);
        }
     }
 }

Cowey

Answer 5

Try this:

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

Simple and efficient.

Blancheblanchette

Answer 6

Use DecimalFormat.

Nuclease

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).

Warplane

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.

Shalna

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

Hurwit