translating foreign data

[Peter J. Holzer]

On 2018-06-23 08:41:38 -0400, Richard Damon wrote:
> On 6/23/18 8:28 AM, Peter J. Holzer wrote:
> > On 2018-06-23 08:12:52 -0400, Richard Damon wrote:
> >> On 6/23/18 7:46 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> >>> If I'm in Australia, using the en-AU locale, nevertheless I can generate 
> >>> a file using , as a decimal separator. Try and stop me :-)
> >> yes, you can MIS-use the en-AU locale and write 1,000 to mean the number
> >> One, just as you can misuse the language and write cat when you mean a
> >> member of the Canine group, but then the misinterpretation is on the
> >> creator of the document, not on the program that was told how the
> >> document is to be read.
> > How would he mis-use the en-AU locale to write 1 as "1,000"? I think
> > to do that he would simply NOT use the locale.
> Once you open the Locale can of worms, EVERYTHING has a locale, to say
> you aren't using a locale is to say you are writing
> something unintelligible, as you can thing of the locale as the set of
> rules to interpret

I don't think that's a useful way to look at it. "Locale" in
(non-technical) English means "place" or "site". The idea behind the
locale concept is that some conventions (e.g. how to write numbers or
how to write strings) depend on the place where the program runs (or
maybe where the user is sitting or grew up or maybe where a file was
produced).

For stuff which doesn't depend on the place (e.g. how a Python program
should be parsed), the locale concept doesn't apply.


> > You two also seem to be writing about different things when you write
> > "THE locale". Steven seems to mean the global settings a user has
> > chosen, you seem to mean the specidic settings appropriate for parsing a
> > specific file.

While I was writing this paragraph I realized that I had also used "the
locale" in a specific meaning in the previous paragraph. I decided to
let it stand and see whether anyone would call me out it.

> You have THE locale for a given piece of data.

Well, you didn't. Even though I quite obviously used "the locale" in
Steven's meaning, you didn't react to that at all and just continue as
if your definition is the only possible one.

        hp

-- 
   _  | Peter J. Holzer    | we build much bigger, better disasters now
|_|_) |                    | because we have much more sophisticated
| |   | hjp at hjp.at         | management tools.
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ | -- Ross Anderson <https://www.edge.org/>
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