Override decimal ToString() method

Question

I have a decimal datatype with a precision of (18, 8) in my database and even if its value is simply 14.765 it will still get displayed as 14.76500000 when I use Response.Write to return its value into a webpage.

Is it possible to override its default ToString method to return the number in the format #,###,##0.######## so that it only displays relevant decimal places?

UPDATE

I'm assuming that when one outputs number on a page like <%= item.price %> (where item.price is a number) that the number's ToString method is being called?

I'm trying to avoid having to change every instance where the value is displayed by defaulting the ToString() format somehow.

Answer 1

You don't want to override ToString(), you want to call ToString() and specify an IFormatProvider or a formatting String

Answer 2

You can't override ToString for decimal type since it's a struct.

But you can use extension methods to do so:

public static class DecimalExtensions
{
      public static string ToString(this decimal some, bool compactFormat)
      {
            if(compactFormat) 
            {
                return some.ToString("#,###,##0.########");
            }
            else
            {
                return some.ToString();
            }
      }
}

So now you can do this:

string compactedDecimalText = 16.38393m.ToString(true);