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iOS

Posted by Robert Ungar
Robert Ungar
15,723 Points

How to display thousands separator in Playground?

Hi,

In Swift 2.0 Basics > Swift Types > Type Safety and Type Inference, Prasan has a thousands separator in his yearOfRetirement constant, 2003, so it shows as 2,003. While it doesn’t make sense in context as a year, how can you turn on this option to show it with the thousands separator? I have exactly what he has but mine just shows 2003.

3 Answers

Jhoan Arango
Jhoan Arango
14,575 Points
Jhoan Arango
Jhoan Arango
14,575 Points

Hello :

Foundation has a class called NSNumberFormatter that will take care of this for you. You can place this code in your playground, and play with it. 

import Foundation

// The number we want to play with
let number = 2016

// Creating an instance of NSNumberFormatter
let formatter = NSNumberFormatter()

// Setting the Style we want for this case
formatter.numberStyle = .DecimalStyle 

/*
 You can also choose .CurrencyStyle, .PercentStyle and others.
 Refer to the Side Note below.
*/

// Doing the actual formatting
formatter.stringFromNumber(number) // Prints 2,016


// Side Note : This is the Enum for the format styles you can choose from.

enum NSNumberFormatterStyle : UInt {
    case NoStyle
    case DecimalStyle
    case CurrencyStyle
    case PercentStyle
    case ScientificStyle
    case SpellOutStyle
    case OrdinalStyle
    case CurrencyISOCodeStyle
    case CurrencyPluralStyle
    case CurrencyAccountingStyle
}

Hope this helps with your question.

Good luck.

Michael Hulet
Michael Hulet
47,913 Points

It's important to note that NSNumberFormatter is a class in the Foundation framework, so you'll need to import it before you can use it, like this:

import Foundation
Robert Ungar
Robert Ungar
15,723 Points
Robert Ungar
Robert Ungar
15,723 Points

Thanks Jhoan Arango and Michael Hulet

Does Prasan have this formatter somewhere else though? Is it maybe just out of the view we're given for the video or in another file? I don't see that in his actual code:

Thousands

Michael Hulet
Michael Hulet
47,913 Points

I'm assuming you're using the latest Xcode 7.3, because it does not display the comma by default. I'm not sure exactly when the comma was removed, but I think it's just a matter of the video being recorded with an older version of Xcode

Robert Ungar
Robert Ungar
15,723 Points
Robert Ungar
Robert Ungar
15,723 Points

Thanks Michael Hulet that's got to be it. I'm using 7.3. It's an odd omission- I didn't see anything in preferences to adjust it so I'll have to search around to see if there's a hidden option or just have to wait for Apple to update

Michael Hulet
Michael Hulet
47,913 Points

I did a quick search through the settings, and I didn't find one. I wouldn't hold your breath for an update, either. If they removed it, they're probably not putting it back