Printing two decimal places from BigDecimal values

Question

I am using BigDecimal to represent money values. My output needs to line up so that (with a non-proportional font) the decimal point and the two decimal places are in the same columns for each line. But when the dollar value has zero cents, or has a number of cents that is divisible by ten, it drops the trailing zeroes, and drops the decimal point if the decimal places are both zeroes. For example, I want to see "25.00" instead of "25" and "25.50" instead of "25.5". It doesn't seem to make any difference if I set the scale to 2. (I have resorted to getting the toString() of the BigDecimal and hacking the string before I display it, but surely there must be an easier way?)
      BigDecimal aaa = new BigDecimal("25");
      BigDecimal bbb = new BigDecimal("25.0");
      BigDecimal ccc = new BigDecimal("25.00");
      BigDecimal ddd = new BigDecimal("25.5");
      BigDecimal eee = new BigDecimal("25.50");
      BigDecimal fff = new BigDecimal("25.75");
      aaa.setScale(2);
      bbb.setScale(2);
      ccc.setScale(2);
      ddd.setScale(2);
      eee.setScale(2);
      fff.setScale(2);
      System.out.println("SCALE SET TO 2: ");
      System.out.println("aaa = " + aaa);
      System.out.println("bbb = " + bbb);
      System.out.println("ccc = " + ccc);
      System.out.println("ddd = " + ddd);
      System.out.println("eee = " + eee);
      System.out.println("fff = " + fff);produces this output:
SCALE SET TO 2:
aaa = 25
bbb = 25.0
ccc = 25.00
ddd = 25.5
eee = 25.50
fff = 25.75Thanks,
Martin

Answer 1

Thankyou Dr. Clap. This solved my problem - I added an LHS to the setScale statements:
      aaa = aaa.setScale(2);
      bbb = bbb.setScale(2);
      ccc = ccc.setScale(2);
      ddd = ddd.setScale(2);
      eee = eee.setScale(2);
      System.out.println("SCALE SET TO 2: ");
      System.out.println("aaa = " + aaa);
      System.out.println("bbb = " + bbb);
      System.out.println("ccc = " + ccc);
      System.out.println("ddd = " + ddd);
      System.out.println("eee = " + eee);produced:
SCALE SET TO 2:
aaa = 25.00
bbb = 25.00
ccc = 25.00
ddd = 25.50
eee = 25.50