# Number Formatting

NumberFormat, DecimalFormat, DecimalFormatSymbols

- Provide control over every aspect of the display
  -- separator characters, optional digits,
  -- maximum and minimum decimal and integer places
  -- optional prefixes and suffixes
- Can produce currency and percentage formats
  -- can be extended to produce other formats
- Allow you to specify new formats with string patterns
- Can retrieve the normalized pattern
- Can parse number, date and time strings if the objects can be formatted
  -- for use when converting text input into binary data
  -- no garentee round-trip results for ChoiceFormat objects when there are more than one mapping

formatting