DecimalFormat negative pattern oddity?

Question

I can't find the answer in teh Googles or SO, and it's annoying me.

Reading the javadocs , I find " If there is an explicit negative subpattern, it serves only to specify the negative prefix and suffix; the number of digits, minimal digits, and other characteristics are all the same as the positive pattern. That means that "#,##0.0#;(#)" produces precisely the same behavior as "#,##0.0#;(#,##0.0#)"." However, this code does not seem to follow with that:

import java.text.DecimalFormat;

public class NumberFormatTest {
    public static void main(String args[]) {
        DecimalFormat df = new DecimalFormat("#,###;(#,###)");
        System.out.println(df.format(-1234.0));

        df.applyPattern("#,###;(#)");
        System.out.println(df.format(-1234.0));
    }
}

give an output of

(1,234)
(1,234

(note the missing paren in line 2)

What am I missing?

Answer 1

Bug in DecimalFormat. See bug report http://bugs.java.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6609740

Answer 2

Try something

    DecimalFormat df=new DecimalFormat("#,##0.0");
    System.out.println(df.format(-12999.0));// the output is: -12 999,0

This is working