How To Retrieve the Regional Settings Currency Symbol

MORE INFORMATION

The following code can be used to retrieve the currency symbol as specified in the Regional Settings of the Windows Control Panel. The GetUserDefaultLCID() function retrieves the default locale for the current user and the GetLocaleInfo() function retrieves information relating to the specified locale. Keep in mind that Visual Basic 6.0 has built in functions to automatically format numbers with the currency symbol as specified in the Control Panel's Regional Settings. While this code works in Visual Basic 6.0, the primary audience for this article are 32-bit Visual Basic 4.0 and Visual Basic 5.0 developers.

Executing this code stores the user default currency symbol in the Symbol string:

   Option Explicit
   Private Declare Function GetLocaleInfo Lib "kernel32" _
      Alias "GetLocaleInfoA" (ByVal Locale As Long, _
      ByVal LCType As Long, ByVal lpLCData As String, _
      ByVal cchData As Long) As Long
   Private Declare Function GetUserDefaultLCID% Lib "kernel32" ()
   Private Const LOCALE_SCURRENCY = &H14

   Dim Symbol As String
   Dim iRet1 As Long
   Dim iRet2 As Long
   Dim lpLCDataVar As String
   Dim Pos As Integer
   Dim Locale as Long
   
   Locale = GetUserDefaultLCID() 
   iRet1 = GetLocaleInfo(Locale, LOCALE_SCURRENCY, lpLCDataVar, 0)
   
   Symbol = String$(iRet1, 0)
   iRet2 = GetLocaleInfo(Locale, LOCALE_SCURRENCY, Symbol, iRet1)
   Pos = InStr(Symbol, Chr$(0))
   If Pos > 0 Then
      Symbol = Left$(Symbol, Pos - 1)
   End If