ACTIONSCRIPT 3 Developer’s Guide en

ACTIONSCRIPT 3.0 DEVELOPER’S GUIDE
Internationalizing applications
Formatting numbers
Flash Player 10.1 and later, Adobe AIR 2.0 and later
The display format of numeric values varies widely from region to region. For example, here is how the number
123456.78 is formatted for certain locales:
Locale Number Format
en-US (English, USA) -123,456.78
de-DE (German, Germany) -123.456,78
fr-FR (France, French) -123 456,78
de-CH (German, Switzerland) -123'456.78
en-IN (English, India) -1,23,456.78
Many Arabic locales 123,456.78-
There are many factors that influence number formats, including:
Separators. The decimal separator is placed between the integer and fractional portions of a number. It can be a
period, comma, or another character. The grouping separator or thousands separator can be a period, a comma, a
non-breaking space, or another character.
Grouping patterns. The number of digits between each grouping separator to the left of the decimal point can be
two or three or another value.
Negative number indicators. Negative numbers can be shown with a minus sign to the left or the right of the
number, or within parentheses for financial applications. For example, negative 19 can be shown as -19, 19-, or (19).
Leading and trailing zeroes. Some cultural conventions add leading or trailing zeroes to displayed numbers. For
example the value 0.17 can be displayed as .17, 0.17, or 0.170, among other options.
Sets of digit characters. Many languages, including Hindi, Arabic, and Japanese, use different sets of digit
characters. The flash.globalization package supports any digit character sets that map to the digits 0-9.
The NumberFormatter class considers all of these factors when formatting numeric values.
Using the NumberFormatter class
The NumberFormatter class formats numeric values (of type int, uint, or Number) according to the conventions of a
specific locale.
The following example shows the simplest way to format a number using the default formatting properties provided
by the user’s operating system:
var nf:NumberFormatter = new NumberFormatter(LocaleID.DEFAULT);
trace(nf.formatNumber(-123456.789))
The result vary based on the user’s locale settings and user preferences. For example, if the user’s locale is fr-FR then
the formatted value would be:
-123.456,789
If you only want to format a number for a specific locale, regardless of the user’s settings, set the locale name
specifically. For example:
Last updated 6/6/2012
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