Hi Ash.
Using a NumberFormat with a "ar" or "ar_SA" locale probably will not help, since this locale just states the way a number should be formatted (decimal separator, currency symbols, etc), but it does not alter the way the numbers look.
See java.text.DecimalFormatSymbols to see what you can really customized in this regard.
Java provides support for certain languages so that the numbers can be expressed in different characters. This is one of the uses Java gives to the the "variant" property in the java.util.Locale class.
For instance, if you want to format a number using thai characters then you have to create a locale this way:
Locale l = new Locale("th","TH","TH").
Unfortunately, if you invoke
Locale.getAvailableLocales() you will discover there is not such special support for arabic. Therefore, you will have to create a fuction yourself that converts every character in the resulting string to you arabic numbers.
See also
Supported Locales for further details.
Pretty much like the one that was already suggested in previous posts, but instead of coverting a arabic number to an european number, it should work the other way round.
See previous post
here [ December 19, 2006: Message edited by: Edwin Dalorzo ]