How do I turn off percent symbol in JFormattedTextField

Question

I am using a custom JFormattedTextField field, that has methods to add masks which apply formatting and add suffix and prefixes.
It allows the user to see the data in display mode (formatted) or raw (unedited mode)
Just found a problem though with our display mode when I try and add a suffix of a % symbol after the text.
It turns out that JFormattedTextField does magic when it sees a %.
It assumes I want to multiply the data by 100, which I do not. (the data is already stored in terms of percent.)
I found an ugly hack to solve my problem, which is:
  DecimalFormat displayFormat = new DecimalFormat();
  DecimalFormatSymbols dfs = displayFormat.getDecimalFormatSymbols();
  dfs.setPercent('~'); // set to a symbol we will never use 
  displayFormat.setDecimalFormatSymbols(dfs);
  this.setFormatterFactory(new DefaultFormatterFactory(new NumberFormatter(displayFormat)));
  // then later we apply our mask
  // used to do this
  // displayFormat.applyPattern(myDisplayFormat);
  // now have to do this so it does not overwrite our percent symbol
  this.displayFormat.applyLocalizedPattern(myDisplayFormat);It seems like there should be an easier way to accomplish this.
What I was really hoping I could do, is "turn off" the percent substitution functionality.
i.e. something like displayFormat.disablePercentFormatting(true);
but at the moment, messing with localised symbols seems like the only way to hack it.
Anyone have any thoughts? I just want DecimalFormat not to treat a % as a special symbol.
note:
Changing the data itself (dividing it by 100) is not an option as the data is entered elsewhere and it would screw up the raw view of the data too.
Changing the underlying framework (of how we use our display / edit fields and masks etc) is not an option
as there are hundreds of screens and objects using this framework already with no problems (they dont have a % in their mask though)
I look forward to bright ideas.
Cheers,
- ding

Answer 1

This behavior is documented in the API of DecimalFormat. If you don't want the special character to be interpreted, you need to quote it:
Many characters in a pattern are taken literally; they are matched during parsing and output unchanged during formatting. Special characters, on the other hand, stand for other characters, strings, or classes of characters. They must be quoted, unless noted otherwise, if they are to appear in the prefix or suffix as literals. and
'      Prefix or suffix      No      Used to quote special characters in a prefix or suffix, for example, "'#'#" formats 123 to "#123". To create a single quote itself, use two in a row: "# o''clock". see also: http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/text/DecimalFormat.html