[Python-Dev] Locale-specific formatting

[R. David Murray]

On Sat, 18 Dec 2010 00:08:47 +0000, MRAB <python at mrabarnett.plus.com> wrote:
> I had a thought about locale-specific formatting.
> 
> Currently, when we want to do locale-specific formatting we use the
> locale module like this:
> 
>  >>> locale.format("%d", 12345, grouping=False)
> '12345'
>  >>> locale.format("%d", 12345, grouping=True)
> '12,345'
> 
> This makes it harder to use more than one locale at a time, or one
> which is different from the default.
> 
> My thought was that we could specify a locale in the format
> specification mini-language and the parameter list of str.format,
> something like this:
> 
>  >>> loc = locale.getlocale()
>  >>> "{0:@1}".format(12345, loc)
> '12345'
>  >>> "{0:, at 1}".format(12345, loc)
> '12,345'
> ...
>  >>> "UK says {value:,.1f at uk} and France says 
> {value:,.1f at france}".format(value=12345, uk=uk_loc, france=france_loc)
> 'UK says 1,234.5 and France says 1 234,5'
> 
> Comments?

There was at least one long thread on this on python-ideas.  Probably
worth finding and reading before proceeding with a new discussion... :)

I think it was part of the discussion that ultimately led to PEP 378.

--
R. David Murray                                      www.bitdance.com