formatting negative integers with parentheses

[Stephen Huey]

I need to format negative and positive integers like 23974 and -98732 in this way:

23,974
(98,732)

The positive ones aren't that hard:

NumberFormat fmt = NumberFormat.getIntegerInstance();
fmt.format(23974);  // turns it into 23,974

For the negative ones, this seems to work for me:

DecimalFormat df = new DecimalFormat();
df.setNegativePrefix("(");
df.setNegativeSuffix(")");
df.format(-98732);  // turns it into (98,732)

However, the DecimalFormat doc advises not to call the DecimalFormat constructors directly. Is there another/better way to do this?

Also, it looks like I can't do the parentheses for negatives on percents, because I only know how to call this:

NumberFormat pct = NumberFormat.getPercentInstance();

And NumberFormat doesn't have those methods I used above...

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Stephen,

However, the DecimalFormat doc advises not to call the DecimalFormat constructors directly. Is there another/better way to do this?

For decimal format, you could use "postivePattern ; negativePattern", right?

I'm not sure how to handle it for the percentages without custom logic. There must be a way though.

[Stephen Huey]

Y'know, I saw that, but I wasn't sure what it was talking about. I think I was a bit too tired, because I just played some basketball and looked at that again, and I see how to use that now!