How to format a number?

[Clodoaldo]

I want to format a number with thousands separator to the 'pt_br'
locale.

I'm trying like this:

>>> import locale
>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, ('pt_br', 'ascii'))
'pt_BR.ISO8859-1'
>>> locale.format('%d', 9876, True)
'9876'
>>> locale.localeconv()['thousands_sep']
''
>>> locale.localeconv()['mon_thousands_sep']
'.'

The thousands separator is defined only for the ['mon_thousands_sep']
key and not for the ['thousands_sep'] one. What should be done? Set the
['thousands_sep'] to '.' or somehow build the format string as a
monetary number? If any of the former, how?

Regards, Clodoaldo Pinto Neto