A System.Globalization.DigitShapes value specifies that no digit shape is substituted for the Unicode input, a digit shape is substituted based on context, or a native national digit shape is substituted for the input.
The Arabic, Indic, and Thai languages have classical shapes for numbers that are different from the digits 0 through 9 (Unicode U+0030 through U+0039), which are most often used on computers. The application uses the System.Globalization.DigitShapes enumeration with the NumberFormatInfo.DigitSubstitution property to specify how to display digits U+0030 through U+0039 in the absence of other formatting information.
The System.Globalization.DigitShapes enumeration is primarily used by applications intended for cultures that use bidirectional scripts. For example, the reading order of Arabic and Indic scripts is bidirectional.