Formatting a float to 2 decimal places

The first thing you need to do is use the decimal type instead of float for the prices. Using float is absolutely unacceptable for that because it cannot accurately represent most decimal fractions.

Once you have done that, Decimal.Round() can be used to round to 2 places.

This is for cases that you want to use interpolated strings. I'm actually posting this because I'm tired of trial and error and eventually scrolling through tons of docs every time I need to format some scalar.

$"{1234.5678:0.00}"        "1234.57"        2 decimal places, notice that value is rounded
$"{1234.5678,10:0.00}"     "   1234.57"     right-aligned
$"{1234.5678,-10:0.00}"    "1234.57   "     left-aligned
$"{1234.5678:0.#####}"     "1234.5678"      5 optional digits after the decimal point
$"{1234.5678:0.00000}"     "1234.56780"     5 forced digits AFTER the decimal point, notice the trailing zero
$"{1234.5678:00000.00}"    "01234.57"       5 forced digits BEFORE the decimal point, notice the leading zero
$"{1234.5612:0}"           "1235"           as integer, notice that value is rounded
$"{1234.5678:F2}"          "1234.57"        standard fixed-point
$"{1234.5678:F5}"          "1234.56780"     5 digits after the decimal point, notice the trailing zero
$"{1234.5678:g2}"          "1.2e+03"        standard general with 2 meaningful digits, notice "e"
$"{1234.5678:G2}"          "1.2E+03"        standard general with 2 meaningful digits, notice "E"
$"{1234.5678:G3}"          "1.23E+03"       standard general with 3 meaningful digits
$"{1234.5678:G5}"          "1234.6"         standard general with 5 meaningful digits
$"{1234.5678:e2}"          "1.23e+003"      standard exponential with 2 digits after the decimal point, notice "e"
$"{1234.5678:E3}"          "1.235E+003"     standard exponential with 3 digits after the decimal point, notice "E"
$"{1234.5678:N2}"          "1,234.57"       standard numeric, notice the comma
$"{1234.5678:C2}"          "$1,234.57"      standard currency, notice the dollar sign
$"{1234.5678:P2}"          "123,456.78 %"   standard percent, notice that value is multiplied by 100
$"{1234.5678:2}"           "2"              :)

Performance Warning

Interpolated strings are slow. In my experience this is the order (fast to slow):

1. value.ToString(format)+" blah blah"
2. string.Format("{0:format} blah blah", value)
3. $"{value:format} blah blah"

String.Format("{0:#,###.##}", value)

A more complex example from String Formatting in C#:

String.Format("{0:$#,##0.00;($#,##0.00);Zero}", value);

This will output “$1,240.00″ if passed 1243.50. It will output the same format but in parentheses if the number is negative, and will output the string “Zero” if the number is zero.

You can pass the format in to the ToString method, e.g.:

myFloatVariable.ToString("0.00"); //2dp Number

myFloatVariable.ToString("n2"); // 2dp Number

myFloatVariable.ToString("c2"); // 2dp currency

Standard Number Format Strings