If the following or similar error is received when compiling the C API the resolve comes by simply adding the ESSAPINU.lib into the project.  Don’t just link it, actually add it to the project and recompile to resolve the compile issue.

Error    11    error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol _EssInit referenced in function “void __cdecl ESS_Init(void)” (?ESS_Init@@YAXXZ)

Microsoft usually has good documentation but on this particular topic I always felt that it was lacking. Here is the MS core documentation for converting a decimal to a string, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/59095yyw.aspx.

I recently needed to ensure that I was only getting only two decimal places on a dollar amount as I converted it into a string and was going to write a nice lengthy post myself and then I found this really nice post over at csharp-examples (view post).

Mainly I was looking for the following syntax just to ensure that I was setting up things correctly:

// just two decimal places
String.Format("{0:0.00}", 123.4567);      // "123.46"
String.Format("{0:0.00}", 123.4);         // "123.40"
String.Format("{0:0.00}", 123.0);         // "123.00"

They have some other great custom formatting items as well. Check ‘em out.