More on an XQuery format-number function

Recently Chris Wallace has been writing about formatting numbers in XQuery; as you may remember, I did blog about an XQuery-based format-number function some time ago, providing a partial implementation.

Chris mentions my post in his Wikibooks entry, and he has been so nice to run some tests and identify a few bugs and limitations. As I've recently had to "enjoy" a red eye flight on my way back to Boston, I couldn't resist the temptation to fix some of those issues.

Attached is a better version; it includes also support for the typical functionality you would access through xsl:decimal-format. The XQuery includes the tests that Chris posted on the Wikibooks entry, plus a few more, whose results are:<tests><br /> <test><br /> <code>local:format-number(12345678.9, '#,###.00')</code><br /> <xquery-result>12,345,678.90</xquery-result><br /> <xslt-result>12,345,678.90</xslt-result><br /> </test><br /> <test><br /> <code>local:format-number(-12345678.9, '#,###.00')</code><br /> <xquery-result>-12,345,678.90</xquery-result><br /> <xslt-result>-12,345,678.90</xslt-result><br /> </test><br /> <test><br /> <code>local:format-number(12345.67,'00000000.00')</code><br /> <xquery-result>00012345.67</xquery-result><br /> <xslt-result>00012345.67</xslt-result><br /> </test><br /> <test><br /> <code>local:format-number(12345.67,'0,000.0000;-000,000.00')</code><br /> <xquery-result>12,345.6700</xquery-result><br /> <xslt-result>12,345.6700</xslt-result><br /> </test><br /> <test><br /> <code>local:format-number(-12345.67,'0,000.0000;-000,000.00')</code><br /> <xquery-result>-012,345.67</xquery-result><br /> <xslt-result>-012,345.67</xslt-result><br /> </test><br /> <test><br /> <code>local:format-number(12345.67,',000')</code><br /> <xquery-result>12,346</xquery-result><br /> <xslt-result>12,346</xslt-result><br /> </test><br /> <test><br /> <code>local:format-number(12345.67,'$,000')</code><br /> <xquery-result>$12,346</xquery-result><br /> <xslt-result>$12,346</xslt-result><br /> </test><br /></tests>
This is far from being a complete solution; there are several patterns that are not supported at all; but it's getting better... As I commented here I do believe that format-number needs to become part of the XQuery language and natively supported by the engine, which is the direction where XQuery 1.1 is moving.

formatnumber-xquery.xq