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Asked: 2026-05-20T23:08:29+00:00

I’d like to be able to get the bits from a System.Decimal value and

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I’d like to be able to get the bits from a System.Decimal value and then convert that to the string representation of the value, much like Decimal.ToString() would do but I have a hard time coming up with the algorithm.

So I have something like this:

decimal d = 1403.45433M;
int[] nDecimalBits = decimal.GetBits(d);

// How to convert the 4 integers in nDecimalBits to a string
// that contains "1403.45433"?

I know the binary layout of the decimal – the first 3 integers contain the value bits and the last integer contains the sign bit and the scaling factor.

I tried searching for the algorithm using various search terms but decimal is mostly used as a synonym for ‘floating-point number’ so my searches turned up answers to unrelated problems.

Any help would be appreciated.

Edit: in response to some answers, I need to send the bits to a different platform where the value needs to be reconstructed. System.Decimal and any of its member functions are not available there, so I need to grab the bits and translate them to a string.

If I had a choice, I’d obviously use ToString() but then I wouldn’t need to ask.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Since you cannot use ToString(), you might want to check out how the mono developers implemented this:

    The entry point is NumberToString(string, decimal, IFormatProvider).

    The interesting part is InitDecHexDigits(uint, ulong), which gets called like this

    InitDecHexDigits ((uint)bits [2], ((ulong)bits [1] << 32) | (uint)bits [0]);

    and does the “bit juggling and shifting” thing to convert the three integers into binary coded decimals (_val1 to _val4), which can then be (trivially) converted into a string.

    (Don’t get confused by the fact that they call it “hex representation”. It’s binary coded decimal digits.)

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