How can i convert English digits to Arabic digits?

Question

I have this C# code for example

DateTime.Now.ToString("MMMM dd, yyyy");

Now the current thread is loading the Arabic culture. So the result is like this

???? 19, 2010

But i don't want the '2010' and the '19' to be in English (also known as Latin or West Arabic digits) - I want East Arabic numbers like "٢".

I tried

DateTime.Now.ToString("MMMM dd, yyyy", CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("ar-lb"));

gave the same result. So any idea?

Answer 1

Thy this workaround (just list all cultures you want to use this numerals in the string array):

private static class ArabicNumeralHelper
{
    public static string ConvertNumerals(this string input)
    {
        if (new string[] { "ar-lb", "ar-SA" }
              .Contains(Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.Name))
        {
            return input.Replace('0', '\u06f0')
                    .Replace('1', '\u06f1')
                    .Replace('2', '\u06f2')
                    .Replace('3', '\u06f3')
                    .Replace('4', '\u06f4')
                    .Replace('5', '\u06f5')
                    .Replace('6', '\u06f6')
                    .Replace('7', '\u06f7')
                    .Replace('8', '\u06f8')
                    .Replace('9', '\u06f9');
        }
        else return input;
    }
}

Then use the method, for all of your strings you want to have 'central Arabic numerals' in, like this:

DateTime.Now.ToString().ConvertNumerals();