On Apr 15, 2007, at 4:00 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> Hi, all!
>
>      In a message dated 4/10/07 5:50:58 PM, Joe Strout writes:
>
>> No, it should be "1,234,567.12". (In the Format specifier,
>> it doesn't matter how many commas you put in or where you
>> put them; the mere presence of a comma indicates that you
>> want to use the thousands separator in the standard way,
>> i.e. every 3 digits.)
>>
>      The last statement prompts me to ask a question about
> the position of the thousands separator. When I was studying
> Japanese, my instructors said that the thousands separator
> was between the thousands and ten-thousands digit not
> between the hundreds and thousands separator.

Not sure where your Japanese instructors came up with that, but  
according to NIST, the digit grouping separator should be placed  
after every group of three numbers.  And, the separator should be a  
"small space".  However, for non-NIST representation, the comma is  
the standard separator where the period is used as the decimal  
separator. The only exception that I found in a brief search was in  
numbers that only have 4 digits to the left of the decimal; maybe  
that's where they came up with it - "unless your numeric value is ten  
thousand or greater, you don't need to use the separator".  In that  
case, the separator is optional unless used to maintain consistency  
in a table.

So, regardless of what you use for the separator, the recommended  
standard grouping is three digits.

> Am I correct
> that if I wanted to vary from the RB-supplied Format function
> in that, I'd have to write one of my own?

Yes, you could and you would, but why would you want to change an  
international standard?

Tim
--
Tim Jones
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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