C# 0 The Complete Reference

#.##

, which tells 

WriteLine( )

 to display two decimal places. 

It is important to understand, however, that 

WriteLine( )

 will display more than one digit 

to the left of the decimal point, if necessary, so as not to misrepresent the value.

Here is another example. This statement

Console.WriteLine("{0:###,###.##}", 123456.56);

generates this output:

123,456.56

If you want to display monetary values, use the 

C

 format specifier. For example:

decimal balance;

balance = 12323.09m;

Console.WriteLine("Current balance is {0:C}", balance);

The output from this sequence is shown here (in U.S. dollar format):

Current balance is $12,323.09

The

C

 format can be used to improve the output from the price discount program 

shown earlier:

// Use the C format specifier to output dollars and cents.

using System;

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class UseDecimal {

  static void Main() {

    decimal price;

    decimal discount;

    decimal discounted_price;

    // Compute discounted price.

    price = 19.95m;

    discount = 0.15m; // discount rate is 15%

    discounted_price = price - ( price * discount);

    Console.WriteLine("Discounted price: {0:C}", discounted_price);

  }

}

Here is the way the output now looks:

Discounted price: $16.96

Literals

In C#, 

literals

 refer to fixed values that are represented in their human-readable form. 

For example, the number 100 is a literal. For the most part, literals and their usage are 

so intuitive that they have been used in one form or another by all the preceding sample 

programs. Now the time has come to explain them formally.

C# literals can be of any simple type. The way each literal is represented depends upon 

its type. As explained earlier, character literals are enclosed between single quotes. For 

example, ‘a’ and ‘%’ are both character literals.

Integer literals are specified as numbers without fractional components. For example, 

10 and –100 are integer literals. Floating-point literals require the use of the decimal point 

followed by the number’s fractional component. For example, 11.123 is a floating-point literal. 

C# also allows you to use scientific notation for floating-point numbers.

Since C# is a strongly typed language, literals, too, have a type. Naturally, this raises the 

following question: What is the type of a numeric literal? For example, what is the type of 

12, 123987, or 0.23? Fortunately, C# specifies some easy-to-follow rules that answer these 

questions.

First, for integer literals, the type of the literal is the smallest integer type that will hold 

it, beginning with