Question

I have a textfield that should accept decimal numbers; it should accept numbers with a comma (6,7) or a point (6.7) irrespective of the user’s locale.

I use the following code:

    NSNumberFormatter* formatter = [[NSNumberFormatter alloc] init];
    NSNumber* number = [formatter numberFromString:txtScore.text];
    NSDecimalNumber* decimalNumber = [[NSDecimalNumber alloc]  initWithDouble:[number doubleValue]];

The problem is that if I use a comma in the textfield, for some locales I always get back 0. The same is true for the point, some locales can read it, but others always return 0.

So, how can I get this textfield to work with both commas and points, irrespective of the user’s locale?

Answer 1

I figured out a hack to solve this problem.

     NSLocale* locale = [[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier:@"en_US"];
NSMutableString* scoreString = [txtScore.text mutableCopy];
[scoreString replaceOccurrencesOfString:@"," withString:@"." options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch range:NSMakeRange(0, [scoreString length])];
NSDecimalNumber* number = [NSDecimalNumber decimalNumberWithString:scoreString locale:locale];    
[locale release];

I now replace every occurrence of a comma with a point and always use the en_US locale that works with a point.

This works, but I wonder if there is perhaps a more natural solution.