title: What is the right approach for serializing/deserializing data in a culture-insensitive manner?
body: <p>I need to persist data to xml and then read it back in a way that data serialized in one culture will then be parse-able in another.  </p>
  
  <p>As I see it there are two ways to accomplish this.  I can either make sure that all parse/tostring/etc. methods are using the invariant culture, or I could set the thread's culture to invariant, do all my (de)serializing, and then switch it back to whatever it was before. </p>
  
  <p>I know that the first approach is deemed to be the right one, but switching the thread's culture seems to be easier and less bug-prone.  Is there a reason for why the first approach is preferred?  Is there some other approach that I am perhaps not aware of?</p>