ZeroSharp

Robert Anderson's ones and zeros

How to Remove the Trailing Zeros of Precision From a C# Decimal

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You may know that the C# Decimal type remembers any trailing zeros. So for instance:

Console.WriteLine(123.45m);
Console.WriteLine(123.45000m);
Console.WriteLine(123.4500000m);

results in

123.45
123.45000
123.4500000

This is because the Decimal type is designed for representing a number including its accuracy.

It is tricky to find a good way of controlling this accuracy. If I have x = 123.45000, how can I easily remove the trailing zeros so that x.ToString() outputs 123.45?

For a while it looked like I’d have to perform some Jon Skeet wizardry, but there is a simpler solution. The following extension method will remove all the trailing zeros.

public static class DecimalExtensions
{
    public static Decimal Normalize(this Decimal value)
    {
        return value / 1.000000000000000000000000000000000m;
    }
}

And if you need an exact number of trailing zeros, you can first Normalize() and then multiply.

Console.WriteLine(123.45m.Normalize() * 1.000m);

will output the following.

123.45000

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