Re: text in programming languages, Unicode in strings

On 5/20/2024 9:13 AM, Michael S wrote:

On Mon, 20 May 2024 15:51:34 -0000 (UTC)
"Stephen Fuld" <SFuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> wrote:
 

Scott Lurndal wrote:
>

"Stephen Fuld" <SFuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> writes:

MitchAlsup1 wrote:

  

And I miss some equivalent of picture clauses in C every time I
see, including in this NG, a number consisting of a string of say
8 or 9 or more digits without the every three digit separator
character, which sure makes reading such numbers easier.  :-(

>
printf has supported that capability for decades.
>
$ LANG=en_US.utf8 printf "%'10.2f\n" $(( 1540.0 * 179.47 + (7928 +
401 - 535)  * 67.61 + 2295 * 173.35  + 3230 * 191.00 + 192 * 750.15
+ 150 * 509.85 + 254 * 6> 2,505,496.61

>
If the mechanisms that you and Anton present were so easily available,
why do I see so many instances of "non separated" outputs?  Are they
too recent, or are programmers too lazy, or do they believe that users
don't care (i.e. that I am in a minority)?
>

 All three and more. It's none-recent, but not universally available
extension.

OK.

4th reason - output formatted this way is less
machine-readable which is important downside on comp.arch.

Good point.  Using that format is sort of a least common denominator. If you knew the output was only going to be read by humans, you would probably use some separator, etc. (see below) to make it easier to read, and if you knew that the output was only going to be read by a program, especially one using the same data formats (endianness, FP formats, etc), you would probably write the output in binary, as it would save CPU cycles on both the write and the read, and require less space.  But if you don't know these things, "unformatted display" is a reasonable compromise.
As for readability on comp.arch, I don't know how many programs read (other than to output it do a screen) comp.arch postings, but I suspect it is tiny.  Remember, my original complaint was about postings on comp.arch and similar things, i.e. those designed to be human readable.

5th reason is that separators are culture-dependent. How many European
countries use comma-separated triads? I think, very few.

While I agree, as I posted elsewhere in this thread, I, and I suspect others would prefer any reasonable separator to no separator.  Of course YMMV.
--
  - Stephen Fuld
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)