Changing the decimal separator to a comma

[andyj]

I've tried using the locale module to set the locale correctly, but
all I get is "Error: unsupported locale setting".

I'm not actually sure what the proper setting should be; I think it's
"fi" for Finland, but this is what I get when I try (under py 2.2):

 >>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL,"fi")
   Traceback (most recent call last):                                 
     File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?                                     
     File "/usr/python2.2.2/lib/locale.py", line 372, in setlocale    
       return _setlocale(category, locale)                            
   locale.Error: locale setting not supported      

Under 2.3 the call succeeds but makes no difference to the decimal
point (which should be a comma for Finland):

>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL,"fi")
'Finnish_Finland.1252'
>>> 0.123
0.123
>>> "%10.2f" % 0.123
'      0.12'

The program I'm working on produces database records using a format
string, and I'm currently manually tracking all the dp's and replacing
them in a loop, just before writing the record to disk, but this is
inefficient and inelegant.

What I'd *like* to be able to do is specify that we want to use commas
for dp's or adjust the locale settings accordingly, then just write
the records directly from the format string...

regards, 
-andyj