[email protected] wrote:
/ …
This sounds as though the radix sign should follow the locale, as do
numbers in that locale.
It sounds to me like the comma is preferred over the dot, period
But either is OK.
So it seems. I just think protocols that cross international boundaries
(that is to say, all of them) should avoid locale-specific formatting
when
it’s possible.
Pit C. wrote:
Paul, what would you think to be a better separator, and why?
Anything but a separator that depends on locale. A separate field, for
example, one separated by a tab or any other character. Something like
that.
The database designers have obviously solved this problem. Their
plain-text
databases are internationally acceptable because they choose field
separators they avoid locale-specific properties.
The remainder of the information provided doesn’t suffer from
local-specificity (hh:mm:ss). A date might pose a problem, but many
databases have a default of yyyy-mm-dd (for plain-text database formats)
which seems to be acceptable to everyone.
When I first saw the data sample I assumed the comma was a field
separator,
which would have made the three digits to the right a milliseconds
value.
But … no such luck.
To a European, “hh:mm:ss,nnn” might mean seconds and fractions thereof.
To
an American, the “,nnn” part appears to be milliseconds. This is an
easily
avoidable confusion.
Paul L. schrieb:
Pit C. wrote:
Paul, what would you think to be a better separator, and why?
Anything but a separator that depends on locale. A separate field, for
example, one separated by a tab or any other character. Something like
that. (…)
Paul, thanks for the clarification.
Regards,
Pit