[Lie Ryan] > > In the finance world, output with commas is the norm. > > I can't cite any source, but I am skeptical with that.
No doubt that you're skeptical of anything you didn't already know ;-) I'm a CPA, was a 15 year division controller for a Fortune 500 company, and an auditor for an international accounting firm. Believe me when I say it is the norm in finance. Besides, it seems like you're arguing that thousands separators aren't needed anywhere at all and have doubts about their utility. Pick-up your pocket calculator and take a look. Look at your paycheck or your bank statement. Check-out a publishing style guide. They are somewhat basic. There's a reason the MS Excel and Lotus offered them from day one. Python's format() style was taken directly from C-Sharp. which offers both an "n" format that is locale sensitive and a non-locale-sensitive variant that specifies a comma. I'm suggesting that we also do both. Random, make-up statistic: 99% of Python scripts are not internationalized, have no need to be internationalized, and have output intended to be used in the script writer's immediate environment. Another issue I have with locale is that you have to find one that matches every specific need. Quick, which one gives you non-breaking spaces for a thousands separator? If you do find such a locale and it happens to be spelled the same way on every platform, is it self-evident in your program that it will in fact print with spaces or has that become an implicit, behind the scenes operation. If later you need to print another number with a different separator, do you have a way make that happen without breaking the first piece of code you wrote? The locale module has plenty of issues for a programmer to think about: http://docs.python.org/library/locale.html#background-details-hints-tips-and-caveats Besides, lots of people use Python who are not professional programmers. We should not require them enter the complicated world of locale just to do a basic formatting task. When I teach Python to pre-college students, there is no way I'm adding locale to the list of things they need to learn to become functional with the language. Sorry for the long post, but I feel like you keep inventing heavy solutions that don't fit well with what we already have. This should be a simple problem -- when writing a number format, how I specify that I want character X as a thousands separator. The answer to that question should be nothing harder than, "add character X to the format string." You're a very creative person, but I don't see Guido accepting any idea that rejects what he has already chosen as the way to format strings. He is no fan of the locale module's API, but it is tightly bound to existing programs and POSIX standards. That greatly limits the options for changing it. I'm sure you can come-up with 500 ways of meeting this need (almost none of which meld with Guido's choice to accept PEP3101 for both 2.6 and 3.0). I'm offering a simple extension to the existing framework that makes the above tasks easy. C-sharp make essentially the same choice in its design. There's no reason for you to have to use it if you hate it. Cheers, Raymond -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
