Formatting question : printing numbers with thousands separators ?

[John W. Baxter]

In article <Xns910E8A4B714EBPaCmAnRDLM at 161.48.128.20>, Fred Pacquier
<fredp at mygale.org.nospam> wrote:

> Sorry if this is a really dumb question, but I believe I did my homework 
> (docs, FATS, Google etc.) and the answer still eludes me :
> 
> how do I print 246814345 as 246,814,345 (or 246 814 345) ?

Or 246.814.345  ;-).  Any others?

I think there is room for a module which "does what Microsoft Excel
does" based on format strings, if not a bit more.

Is there such a module?

  --John