show a minus sign as an output instead of the parentheses

[HandersonVA]

When I save a minus value, the output comes as (500.00). I think the parentheses are default for the minus value in cf. How can I display –500.00 instead of (500.00)? I looked at the numberformat function, but could not find the mask for it.

[Dan_Bracuk]

quote:

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Originally posted by: HandersonVA
When I save a minus value, the output comes as (500.00). I think the parentheses are default for the minus value in cf. How can I display –500.00 instead of (500.00)? I looked at the numberformat function, but could not find the mask for it.

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Here is how you would do it in oracle. Once you have the gist of it you can see if your own db supports it. by the way, || is oracle's concatonation operator.

select case
when numfield >= 0 then to_char(numfield)
else '-' || to_char(numfield * -1) end displaynumfield
etc

[paross1]

Saving it where, and displaying it how?

Phil

[Guest]

<CFOUTPUT>
<CFIF foo LT 0>-</CFIF>#NumberFormat(Abs(foo), "999,999,999.99")#
</CFOUTPUT>

[HandersonVA]

I think that can be one of the solutions.
However,
the first time when I insert a minus value, it goes through w/o any problems, but when I update the minus value, i got an error message. so before I use ur select stmt, I need to have a conditional stmt to find a parenthesis to check if the value that I pass to the database is negative or positive. It would be nice if i can find any cf function to display a minus sign instead of a parentheses, "( )" for any minus values.

what i did on this issue before saving into database,
<cfif find("(", form.myprice)>
<cfset form.myprice = ReReplace(form.myprice, ",|\$|\(|\)", "", "ALL")>
<cfset form.myprice = "-" & form.myprice>
<cfelse>
<cfset form.myprice = ReReplace(form.myprice, ",|\$", "", "ALL")>
</cfif>

but I wonder if there are other solutions. thanks again.

[SafariTECH · Accepted solution]

according to MX7 help docs, if you use

NumberFormat(number,"-999,999")

it should place a minus sign at the beginning if negative and a blank space if it is positive.

this example is formatting for 6 digits with a thousands separator, but you could use any formatting mask

[HandersonVA]

I missed the second part of the numberformat function which is minus sign before negative number. thank you SafarTech and others.