Question

I could probably do this in a series of steps by looking at the last character of the string and based on what it is send it to a particular function to have the conversion made. But I am just wondering if there is any easier way to do the following.

For example I have a string that might say something like 23.44M or 5.23B, the M and B obviously stand for “Million” or “Billion”, I want to convert that string into the number it is representing but just not sure of the most efficient way to do this. Looking for some ideas. Thanks

Answer 1

/// <summary>
/// Gets the value.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="number">The number.</param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static decimal GetValue(string number)
{
    char unit = number.Last();
    string num = number.Remove(number.Length - 1, 1);

    decimal multiplier;
    switch (unit)
    {
        case 'M':
        case 'm':
            multiplier = 1000000; break;

        default:
            multiplier = 1; break;
    }

    return decimal.Parse(num) * multiplier;
}