How to format a number using comma as thousands separator in C?

c, formatting, locale, numbers, printf

Solution

If your printf supports the `'` flag (as required by POSIX 2008 `printf()`), you can probably do it just by setting your locale appropriately. Example:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <locale.h>

int main(void)
{
    setlocale(LC_NUMERIC, "");
    printf("%'d\n", 1123456789);
    return 0;
}

And build & run:

$ ./example 
1,123,456,789

Tested on Mac OS X & Linux (Ubuntu 10.10).

Problem

In C, how can I format a large number from e.g. `1123456789` to `1,123,456,789`? I tried using `printf("%'10d\n", 1123456789)`, but that doesn't work. Could you advise anything? The simpler the solution the better.

Original source

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