#1,118 – An Example of Input that Obeys CurrentCulture

One step in internationalizing an application is to respect the current regional settings when reading numeric or date/time values from a user.

If you are parsing user-entered text and converting to numeric or date/time data, the Parse methods associated with individual data types respect the current regional settings.

Below, we read text from two TextBox controls, interpreting the first value as a double and the second as a DateTime using the corresponding Parse method.

        private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            try
            {
                double num = double.Parse(txt1.Text);
                DateTime dt = DateTime.Parse(txt2.Text);
            }
            catch (Exception xx)
            {
                MessageBox.Show(xx.ToString());
            }
        }

On an English/US system, we can enter the data as “1.1” and “5/2/12”.  The date is interpreted as May 2nd.

For French/France, we must enter “1,1” for the double.  “5/2/12” is interpreted as Feb 5th.