[Python-Dev] Re: Be Honest about LC_NUMERIC [REPOST] (original) (raw)

Martin v. Löwis martin at v.loewis.de
Tue Sep 2 22:16:50 EDT 2003

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at comcast.net> writes:

I can't find anything in the std supporting the claim. For that matter, I can't find anything in the std supporting the notion that a locale is allowed to insert thousand-separator characters either (can you?).

No: I'm now convinced that sprintf is forbidden to insert the thousands separator. This is why POSIX added the '-flag (%'f); this will produce the thousands-separator.

That said: Implementations might choose to ignore the standard in that respect. This issue just supports my thesis that the patch is complicated: If I have to read the C99 standard to find out whether it is correct, it must be complicated. I doubt either the submitters or the original author of the code did that exercise...

There's lots of stuff allowing a locale to accept locale-specific spellings (when parsing strings), in addition to the "C" locale spellings; the other direction (producing strings) appears much less permissive.

Indeed. I'm not sure whether this is intentional, though.

Regards, Martin

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