#1,116 – An Example of Output that Obeys CurrentCulture

The first step in internationalizing an application is to respect the current regional settings when outputting numeric, date/time, or currency values.

Below is an example of an application that displays numeric and date/time values, using the ToString method for instances of double and DateTime.

    <StackPanel>
        <StackPanel Margin="10" Orientation="Horizontal">
            <StackPanel>
                <Label Name="lbl1"/>
                <Label Name="lbl2"/>
                <Label Name="lbl3"/>
                <Label Name="lbl4"/>
                <Label Name="lbl5"/>
            </StackPanel>
            <StackPanel>
                <Label Name="lbl6"/>
                <Label Name="lbl7"/>
            </StackPanel>
        </StackPanel>
        <Button Content="Gen Strings" Padding="10,5"
                Margin="10"
                Click="Button_Click"/>
    </StackPanel>

In the Click event handler, we set the labels’ content.

        private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            DateTime rightNow = DateTime.Now;

            lbl1.Content = rightNow.ToString();
            lbl2.Content = rightNow.ToString("d");  // short date
            lbl3.Content = rightNow.ToString("D");  // long date
            lbl4.Content = rightNow.ToString("t");  // short time
            lbl5.Content = rightNow.ToString("T");  // long time

            double num = 123456.789;
            lbl6.Content = num.ToString();
            lbl7.Content = num.ToString("n");
        }

With regional settings set to English (United States), the output looks like this:

If I change my region to French (France), the formatting changes as expected.