[etoys-dev] How can I show a number with thousands seperators

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 2012-07-08, at 22:01, Steve Thomas wrote:

> Well second coolest "when it works" :)
> 
> So I was able to change 1000 to '1,000'  but when I used the numeric value of '1,000' I get 1 instead of 1000 (note already put an enhancement request in tracker).
> 
> So how can I remove translate '1,000' to 1000? Tried method finder, but no luck using "'1,000'. 1000".

Well, the method finder works only if a single method does what you need, and there is no such method. One example that is helpful would be

	'1,000' . ',' . '1000'

or the less obvious

	'1,000' . $, . '1000'

(which uses Smalltalk's notation for characters)

> I can think of a couple ways of doing this (ex:  iterate through the characters and remove commas)   But there really should be an easier more Etoys friendly way.
> 
> Also for internationalization I noticed that the decimal mark is always a period (even when using German, perhaps they have finally realized we have a better system, dividing by 10 is too easy and requires no hard fun ;)

I don't get the joke why you think any of the notations is inherently "better".

But maybe we can agree that mixing commas and dots is not ideal. Switching the notation based on locale is no solution either. Projects that use numerical strings would become dependent on the locale.

The best way I can think of is following the ISO recommendation of using spaces for digit grouping. This could be a relatively simple change, and would be unambiguous internationally.

- Bert -