March 18, 2009
2:42 a.m.
Guido van Rossum wrote:
(2) To avoid fraud
when printing certain documents -- it's easier to insert a '1' in front of a small number than to change a '0' into something else. However it's easy to add a '1' before a string of leading zeroes if there's a sliver of space available, so it's better still to fill with some other character such as '*'. You need a cooperative font for that to work.
What I've seen is the '$' sign immediately in front, e.g. $001,000.00.
I think I'd rather see something like: $==1,000.00== I wouldn't use zeroes, if I were the bank. It is bad on the aesthetics, and too easy to fraud.