How to convert string to decimal in powershell?

Question

I have a string,

$string = "2,55"

How to convert this string to decimal?

Solution 1

In short -

[decimal]$string.Replace(",", ".")

Solution 2

Another way of converting this (not necessarily better) is using the ToDecimal method with a specific culture. Here I'm using the standard french culture.

 [System.Convert]::ToDecimal("2,55",[cultureinfo]::GetCultureInfo('fr-FR'))
 2.55

Solution 3

You should convert using the current locale. Replacing , with . isn't reliable and is slightly slower (because another string must be created). Both Parse and TryParse have a culture parameter that you can use

PS D:\> $string = "2,55"
PS D:\> $culture = Get-Culture
PS D:\> [decimal]::Parse($string, $culture)
2.55
PS D:\> [decimal]$dec = 0
PS D:\> [decimal]::TryParse($string, [Globalization.NumberStyles]::Float, $culture, [ref]$dec)
True
PS D:\> $dec
2.55

If you know the locale of the input then parse directly in that locale by using GetCultureInfo

$culture = [cultureinfo]::GetCultureInfo('fr-FR')

Note that if the string contains the exponent like "2,55e2" then none of the current answers actually work (although it may appears to work). For more details read How can I convert a string such as 5.7303333333e+02 to decimal in PowerShell?

Comments

[mklement0]

That's helpful in general, but note that PowerShell's casts always apply the invariant culture, where the decimal mark is .. Therefore, the OP's input string wouldn't yield the desired result: [decimal] "2,55" -> 255; that is, the , was interpreted as a thousands-grouping symbol and effectively ignored.

[Modro]

@mklement0, thanks for the feedback. I missed this detail.