simple datareader issue (I hope)

Question

Would be most grateful for any help on this issue!! Datareader is working great, but have one small issue when using against a legacy database. In one table, there is a Price column, and the ODBC driver returns the data type of decimal. So far, so good, but here's the catch: the driver (I can only assume) sticks a '$' in front of the value. If I use ODBCView (query tester) against the data source, this is what I see "$ 100.00". I cannot seem to find a way to use the reader to get this value in a 'raw' fashion so that I could convert it. I have tried ever combination of: myreader.GetValue(n) myreader.GetDecimal(n).ToString() and all combinations/permutations thereof. MyReader.GetSchemaTable tells me it's decimal and 13 chars long. Anybody have an idea what to try next? TIA!

Tanvir Huda · Answer

Hi Tia I think you must have solved ur problem by this time. Can u pls tell us what it a Legacy Database ( haven't heard of that b4) Anyway if that one is a access Db and the price column has been formated as currency then give you the result u are getting . However when you are trying to getDecimal it will try to convert the coressponding values to a decimal. and in that case if the values is not in decimal format  in your case which is not (as prefix $) it will throw an exception. So the better way of doing this is try to get it using GetValue(..) method. and then convert it to string and then get the substring and then convert the substring in to decimal .That might work string s=myReader.GetValue(1).toString(); s=s.sunString(1s.Length-1); // tear off the $ sign Decimal d=Decimal.Parsedecimal(s); //similar command that may work

spgilmore · Answer

What is a the legacy database? Perhaps I can reproduce the problem. Can you not convert this to a string with .ToString() and then remove the leading $ ? An ugly workaround I know. What exactly happens when you use myreader.GetValue(n)? You told us you tried it but didn't tell us what happened. Do you get an error?