title: DecimalFormat applyPattern in Java not overriding the locale settings
body: <p>I'm trying to debug an issue involving <code>DecimalFormat#applyPattern(String)</code> in Java 1.6. The default locale is French so the decimal separator by default is ','. However, the pattern specifies applying a '.' to the decimal format instance which it doesn't seem to. I tried to debug into <code>applyPattern()</code> but couldn't see the variable values. I'm not really familiar with patterns and reg-ex's so I'm not sure if the issue is with the pattern or something else. Is it the pattern which is incorrect or there is some other issue with the code?</p>
  
  <p>Here is the code snippet:</p>
  
  <pre><code>public class DecimalFormatTester
  {
     static private final DecimalFormat doubleFormat = (DecimalFormat) NumberFormat.getInstance();
  
       static 
       {
         doubleFormat.applyPattern("############.00");
       }
  
    public static String toString(double value) 
    {
      synchronized (doubleFormat) 
      {
          return doubleFormat.format(value);
      }
    }
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Here is a sample line of <code>Junit</code> code which fails:</p>
  
  <pre><code>assertEquals("String values aren't equal", "2179005635.00", DecimalFormatTester.toString(2.179005635E9));
  </code></pre>