MACROMEDIA COLDFUSION 4.5-CFML LANGUAGE Reference page 496

472
Note
Usage
The position of codes in format masks determines where those codes will have effect.
For example, if you place a dollar sign character at the far left of a format mask,
ColdFusion displays a dollar sign at the very left edge of the formatted number. If you
separate the dollar sign on the left edge of the format mask by at least one underscore,
ColdFusion displays the dollar sign just to the left of the digits in the formatted
number.
In all examples below, the numbers under the masks and the formatted output are
used to clearly show the positions of characters.
Number
4.37
4.37
This positioning idea can also be used to show where to place the - (minus sign) for
negative numbers:
Number
-4.37
-4.37
There are four possible positions for any code character: far left, near left, near right,
and far right. The left and right positions are determined by the side of the decimal
point the code character is shown on. For formats that do not have a fixed number of
decimal places, you can use a ^ (caret) to separate the left fields from the right.
Whether the code is placed in the far or near position is determined by the use of _
(underscore). Most code characters will have their effect determined by which of these
If you do not specify a sign for the mask, positive and negative numbers
will not align in columns. As a result, if you expect to display both positive
and negative numbers in your application, use either the space or use -
(minus sign) to force a space in front of positive numbers and a minus
sign in front of negative numbers.
Mask Result
$____.__ "$
_$___.__ "
12345678 12345678
Mask Result
-____.__ "-
_-___.__ "
12345678 12345678
4.37"
$4.37"
4.37"
-4.37"
CFML Language Reference