translating foreign data

[Cameron Simpson]

On 21Jun2018 10:12, Ethan Furman <ethan at stoneleaf.us> wrote:
>I need to translate numeric data in a string format into a binary 
>format.  I know there are at least two different methods of 
>representing parts less that 1, such as "10.5" and "10,5".  The data 
>is encoded using code pages, and can vary depending on the file being 
>read (so I can't rely on current locale settings).
>
>I'm sure this is a solved problem, but I'm not finding those solutions.  Any 
>pointers?

It sounds like you're conflating two problems:

- the file character data encoding

- the numeric representation

Can't you just read the file as a text file using the correct 
codepage->decoding setting to get strings, _then_ parse numbers either with 
some clunky regexp based approach or some flexible external library for common 
numeric forms? (Someone suggested babel, I've never used it.)

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <cs at cskk.id.au>