Re: Formatting: separating commas for non-decimals

Subject: Re: Formatting: separating commas for non-decimals
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1999/11/15
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3151655297035748@naggum.no>

* Marco Antoniotti <marcoxa@parades.rm.cnr.it>
| I know CL is an ANSI standard, but in Italy you would write
| 
| 	21.975.308.442
| 
| (at the exchange rate of 1.780 ITL per USD).  I.e. you'd use points
| instead of commas. :)

(defun print-money (lire)
  (format nil "ITL ~,,'.:D" lire))

(print-money 21975308442)
=> "ITL 21.975.308.442"

| So, this is an issue of "internationalization".

  using the period (espesially when mislabeled "full stop") as the grouping
  delimiter and comma as the fraction mark is REALLY STUPID.  as early as
  in second grade, when I was first exposed to the other use of comma, I
  raised my hand and asked the completely befuddled teacher why we used the
  comma both for decimal point and a list separator when that clearly made
  it easy to get things wrong.  I recall that she got angry when I insisted
  it was dumb, and I can probably trace my years of arduous involvement in
  standards committees to these traumatic early childhood events.  the
  really sad thing is that ISO buys into this comma crap, too.

#:Erik
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