CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#
Sean Martin
Sean Martin

Reputation: 21

Formatting Output in C# With Curly Brackets

What do the values within the curly brackets do in this example?

{
 double price = 1234.56
 Console.WriteLine("TV{0:F0} is {1:C}" , 2, price);
 Console.Read();
}

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1586

Answers (2)

David Pine
David Pine

Reputation: 24525

What do the values within the curly brackets do in this example?

They are format specifications for the values provided. Essentially, it instructs the Console.WriteLine function how to format the values as strings for output to the console. Here is a .NET fiddle that exemplifies this.

The MSDN documentation has an extensive example that shows how these work.

  1. {0:F0} takes the given 2 int value, and simply prints it as 2, "2"
  2. {1:C} takes the given 1234.56 double value and treats it as currency, "$1,234.45".

The 0 and 1 are significant as they are the zero-based array indicator of the location in which the parameters map to the string formatting. For example, the below demonstrates outputs from altering the arguments to better visualize the impact.

Console.WriteLine("TV{0:F0} is {1:C}", 2, price);  // Prints TV2 is $1,234.56
Console.WriteLine("TV{0:F0} is {1:C}", price, 2);  // Prints TV1234 is $2.00

Upvotes: 0

nozzleman
nozzleman

Reputation: 9649

Basically the first number ist the index of the argument (0 means 2, 1 means price in your example).

The value after the colon is one of the Standard Numeric Format Strings, see MSDN-Docs for available options.

  • {0:F0} prints 2 because parameter 0 is 2 and format is Fixed Point with zero decimal places (F0)
  • {1:C} prints $1234,56becaus parameter 1 (price) is 1234.56 and format is Currency (C)

This example uses only Format Strings for numerics, there are also Standard Format Strings for DateTime and so on..

Upvotes: 3

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