[Python-ideas] Rough draft: Proposed format specifier for a thousands separator (discussion moved from python-dev)

[Giovanni Bajo]

On Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:49:24 -0700, Raymond Hettinger wrote:

> [spir]
>> Probably you know that already, but it doesn't hurt anyway. In french
>> and most rroman languages comma is the standard decimal sep; and either
>> space or dot is used, when necessary, to sep thousands. (It's veeery
>> difficult for me to read even short numbers with commas used as
>> thousand separator.)
>>
>> en: 1,234,567.89
>> fr: 1.234.567,89
>> or: 1 234 567,89

I'll notice that the international standard is to use just space:

http://www.bipm.org/jsp/en/ViewCGPMResolution.jsp?CGPM=22&RES=10

reaffirms that "Numbers may be divided in groups of three in order to 
facilitate reading; neither dots nor commas are ever inserted in the 
spaces between groups", as stated in Resolution 7 of the 9th CGPM, 1948.

In Italian, we use a character which is not available in keyboard, nor I 
find it in an Unicode map, so let's ignore it :) On computers, we usually 
simply put a period between thousands.
-- 
Giovanni Bajo
Develer S.r.l.
http://www.develer.com