How do I format a number as a string, so that zero is replaced by the empty string

Question

I need for this to work in a single format statement and to work for both ints and decimals:

For example:

int myInt=0;
decimal myDecimal=0.0m;

// ... Some other code

string formattedResult1=String.Format("{0}",myInt);
string formattedResult2=String.Format("{0}",myDecimal);

The expected results are:

"" (i.e., string.Empty) if the item to be formatted is zero and a numeric value (e.g., "123.456" for the decimal version) if it isn't.

I need for this to occur exclusively as a result of the format specification in the format string.

Answer 1

This should do:

string formattedResult1 = string.Format("{0:0.######;-0.######;\"\"}", myInt);

The colon introduces a numeric format string. The numeric format string is divided into 3 parts with semicolons: part 1 is for positive numbers, part 2 for negative numbers, and part 3 for zeros. To define a blank string you need to delimit it with double quotes otherwise it doesn't like it.

See MSDN for the full syntax.