Re: text in programming languages, Unicode in strings

Anton Ertl wrote:

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

Anton Ertl wrote:
 

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

[...]

So the question is what locale the posters in this newsgroup use.

I >> typically use the C.utf8 locale, because then ls sorts
directories as >> Thompson intended, but which does not show
thousands separator.  If I >> want to show thousands separators, I
usually do it with >>

LC_NUMERIC=prog <command>
 
or (on machines where I have not installed the prog locale):
 
LC_NUMERIC=en_US <command>
 
Let's see how that works for some programs:
 
[c8:~:105615] LC_NUMERIC=prog perf stat true
 
 Performance counter stats for 'true':
 
              0.17 msec task-clock                #    0.376 CPUs
utilized                  0      context-switches          #

0.000 >> K/sec                  0      cpu-migrations            #
0.000 >> K/sec                 42      page-faults               #
0.242 >> M/sec            470_561      cycles                    #
2.716 GHz >>              5_214      stalled-cycles-frontend   #
1.11% frontend >> cycles idle             28_375
stalled-cycles-backend    # >> 6.03% backend cycles idle
515_987      instructions >> #    1.10  insn per cycle

#    0.05  stalled cycles per insn            103_096      branches
#  595.157 M/sec              4_973      branch-misses

# >> 4.82% of all branches

 
       0.000460708 seconds time elapsed
 
       0.000522000 seconds user
       0.000000000 seconds sys

 
 
I would be happier with that (using an underscore for the thousands
separator) than with no separation.

 
The underscore is due to my "prog" locale
<https://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/locale-prog/>.  If you use
LC_NUMERIC=en_US, you get "," as thousands separator; if you use,
e.g., LC_NUMERIC=de_AT, you get ".".  If you use LC_NUMERIC=C, you get
nothing.  All assuming you have these locales installed.

Interesting.  As Isaid, I would be happier with any of those than no
separator at all.

 

I vaguely remember that in COBOL (which was defined before
locale were a thing), if you specified "Decimal is Comma" (I may
have the syntax wrong), then the decimal speparator became the
comma.

 
In the source code?

 
 
I had tolook this up, as it has been far to long, but yes.
 
>

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cobol-zos/6.3?topic=section-decimal-point-is-comma-clause

 
Interesting.  Can be seen as another unneeded feature that later
programming languages did not include.
 

No, if you wanted to use this, you added the "Decimal point is
comma" statement in the configuration section.  Note that this is
obsolete, as COBOL now supports some version of locales.

 
But that's a different feature: decimal-point-is-comma is for the
source code, while the locale is for the input and output of the
resulting program.  If you compile a C program with LC_NUMERIC=de_AT,
the decimal separator in the C code is still ".", not what comes from
the locale.  But if you then run a printf or scanf with the "'" in the
conversion specifier (and you are on a Unix system), you get the
output according to the locale, and the input is scanned according to
the locale.

Yes and no.  While the changes to numeric literals in the source code,
obviously effects only that, changing the meaning in the Picture clause
causes the change to be reflected in the output of the program.




--
 - Stephen Fuld
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)