How can i convert English digits to Arabic digits?

Question

I have this C# code for example

DateTime.Now.ToString("MMMM dd, yyyy");

Now the current thread is loading the Arabic culture. So the result is like this

???? 19, 2010

But i don't want the '2010' and the '19' to be in English (also known as Latin or West Arabic digits) - I want East Arabic numbers like "٢".

I tried

DateTime.Now.ToString("MMMM dd, yyyy", CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("ar-lb"));

gave the same result. So any idea?

Answer 1

I've taken @Marcel B approach/workaround as I'm facing the same issue as the original question states.

In my case, it is for "ar-KW" Culture. The only difference is that I'm using the NumberFormat.NativeDigits which is already part of the CultureInfo.

You can check that like this (based on your current thread scenario):

Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.NumberFormat.NativeDigits

So, the code will look like this:

private static class ArabicNumeralHelper
{
    public static string ConvertNumerals(this string input)
    {
        CultureInfo cultureInfo = Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;

        if (new string[] { "ar-lb", "ar-SA" }
              .Contains(cultureInfo.Name))
        {
            return input.Replace('0', cultureInfo.NumberFormat.NativeDigits[0])
                        .Replace('1', cultureInfo.NumberFormat.NativeDigits[1])
                        .Replace('2', cultureInfo.NumberFormat.NativeDigits[2])
                        .Replace('3', cultureInfo.NumberFormat.NativeDigits[3])
                        .Replace('4', cultureInfo.NumberFormat.NativeDigits[4])
                        .Replace('5', cultureInfo.NumberFormat.NativeDigits[5])
                        .Replace('6', cultureInfo.NumberFormat.NativeDigits[6])
                        .Replace('7', cultureInfo.NumberFormat.NativeDigits[7])
                        .Replace('8', cultureInfo.NumberFormat.NativeDigits[8])
                        .Replace('9', cultureInfo.NumberFormat.NativeDigits[9]);
        }
        else return input;
    }
}

I hope it helps.