Am Dienstag, 12. Juli 2005 05:29 schrieb Bruce Momjian:
> > Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > > I have heavily modified your patch and have applied it. Instead of
> > > using langinfo, I used a \pset variable numericsep.

> Because I don't have langinfo on my system, so I can't test it, nor add
> configure code for it. It also prevents us from using space as the
> separator, which is the international standard.

OK, so let's discuss what we really want here.

The original submitter wanted locale-dependent output, which seems reasonable,
because that's what locale settings are intended for.

The current state allows users to manually set the format, or actually only
one aspect of the format? Where can you set the decimal separator and the
size of the grouping (3 digits or 4 digits)? Is this capability even useful
to get localized behavior?

My other concern is that if we allow manual specification of the output format
of some data type, then eventually someone will want to specify the format of
some other data type as well, such as the date/time types. We should think
about whether we want to be consistent here.

--
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/

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Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Am Dienstag, 12. Juli 2005 05:29 schrieb Bruce Momjian:
> > > Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > > > I have heavily modified your patch and have applied it. Instead of
> > > > using langinfo, I used a \pset variable numericsep.
>
> > Because I don't have langinfo on my system, so I can't test it, nor add
> > configure code for it. It also prevents us from using space as the
> > separator, which is the international standard.
>
> OK, so let's discuss what we really want here.
>
> The original submitter wanted locale-dependent output, which seems reasonable,
> because that's what locale settings are intended for.

True, but there were no locale configure tests, and I don't have
langinfo, so I just made it a \pset 'string' variable. Also, when I
learned that the international system uses a space to separate
trigroups, a separate setting seemed best:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_%...ion%29#Numbers

One thing we could do is to have a special value like 'locale' that uses
langinfo, and all other values are taken literally.

> The current state allows users to manually set the format, or actually only
> one aspect of the format? Where can you set the decimal separator and the
> size of the grouping (3 digits or 4 digits)? Is this capability even useful
> to get localized behavior?

You can't change the grouping from three, and the decimal is only be
changed by setting the numeric separator to a period. We could add a
new \pset for the decimal mark, but then do we auto-set it when the
separator is a period?

> My other concern is that if we allow manual specification of the output format
> of some data type, then eventually someone will want to specify the format of
> some other data type as well, such as the date/time types. We should think
> about whether we want to be consistent here.

We do allow MDY and DMY specification, but that controls both input and
output in the server, while this just controls psql display. It is a
good question how other settings should be handled, but I don't know the
answers. Anyone?

--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

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Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> We do allow MDY and DMY specification, but that controls both input and
> output in the server, while this just controls psql display. It is a
> good question how other settings should be handled, but I don't know the
> answers. Anyone?

This patch sounds quite a lot different from what I thought we had
agreed to, which was a way to specify that the client-side LC_NUMERIC
locale settings should be used for formatting numbers. I think the only
pset should be "locale on" or "locale not on". This business about
space is a red herring: if you want that, create a locale spec that
specifies it.

regards, tom lane

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Tom Lane wrote:
> Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> > We do allow MDY and DMY specification, but that controls both input and
> > output in the server, while this just controls psql display. It is a
> > good question how other settings should be handled, but I don't know the
> > answers. Anyone?
>
> This patch sounds quite a lot different from what I thought we had
> agreed to, which was a way to specify that the client-side LC_NUMERIC
> locale settings should be used for formatting numbers. I think the only
> pset should be "locale on" or "locale not on". This business about
> space is a red herring: if you want that, create a locale spec that
> specifies it.

Well, how many people have langinfo? I don't. If this is what the
group wants, Someone with langinfo is going to have to code the
configure tests and convert it to a binary setting, or remove the patch.

--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

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Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>> This patch sounds quite a lot different from what I thought we had
>> agreed to, which was a way to specify that the client-side LC_NUMERIC
>> locale settings should be used for formatting numbers. I think the only
>> pset should be "locale on" or "locale not on". This business about
>> space is a red herring: if you want that, create a locale spec that
>> specifies it.

> Well, how many people have langinfo? I don't.

What's langinfo got to do with it? To minimize our portability
exposure, the patch should use the same facilities that
src/backend/utils/adt/pg_locale.c already depends on, namely
setlocale() and localeconv().

regards, tom lane

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Tom Lane wrote:
> Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> > Tom Lane wrote:
> >> This patch sounds quite a lot different from what I thought we had
> >> agreed to, which was a way to specify that the client-side LC_NUMERIC
> >> locale settings should be used for formatting numbers. I think the only
> >> pset should be "locale on" or "locale not on". This business about
> >> space is a red herring: if you want that, create a locale spec that
> >> specifies it.
>
> > Well, how many people have langinfo? I don't.
>
> What's langinfo got to do with it? To minimize our portability
> exposure, the patch should use the same facilities that
> src/backend/utils/adt/pg_locale.c already depends on, namely
> setlocale() and localeconv().

The original patch included "langinfo.h" and used this call to set the
default separator:

char *dec_point = nl_langinfo(__DECIMAL_POINT);

I don't see __DECIMAL_POINT defined anywhere on the FreeBSD 4.11 box we
use for CVS.

--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

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On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 10:48:40AM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> > Am Dienstag, 12. Juli 2005 05:29 schrieb Bruce Momjian:
> > > > Bruce Momjian wrote:
>
> > The current state allows users to manually set the format, or
> > actually only one aspect of the format? Where can you set the
> > decimal separator and the size of the grouping (3 digits or 4
> > digits)? Is this capability even useful to get localized
> > behavior?
>
> You can't change the grouping from three,

This makes it a non-starter, IMHO. One set of people who use 4 digits
is this little ethnic group called the Chinese.

> > My other concern is that if we allow manual specification of the
> > output format of some data type, then eventually someone will want
> > to specify the format of some other data type as well, such as the
> > date/time types. We should think about whether we want to be
> > consistent here.
>
> We do allow MDY and DMY specification, but that controls both input
> and output in the server, while this just controls psql display. It
> is a good question how other settings should be handled, but I don't
> know the answers. Anyone?

Hrm. I think we can safely tackle input and output as separate
features here. What do we do for to_char() with such separators?

Cheers,
D
--
David Fetter david@fetter.org http://fetter.org/
phone: +1 510 893 6100 mobile: +1 415 235 3778

Remember to vote!

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David Fetter wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 10:48:40AM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> > > Am Dienstag, 12. Juli 2005 05:29 schrieb Bruce Momjian:
> > > > > Bruce Momjian wrote:
> >
> > > The current state allows users to manually set the format, or
> > > actually only one aspect of the format? Where can you set the
> > > decimal separator and the size of the grouping (3 digits or 4
> > > digits)? Is this capability even useful to get localized
> > > behavior?
> >
> > You can't change the grouping from three,
>
> This makes it a non-starter, IMHO. One set of people who use 4 digits
> is this little ethnic group called the Chinese.

I didn't know that.

> > > My other concern is that if we allow manual specification of the
> > > output format of some data type, then eventually someone will want
> > > to specify the format of some other data type as well, such as the
> > > date/time types. We should think about whether we want to be
> > > consistent here.
> >
> > We do allow MDY and DMY specification, but that controls both input
> > and output in the server, while this just controls psql display. It
> > is a good question how other settings should be handled, but I don't
> > know the answers. Anyone?
>
> Hrm. I think we can safely tackle input and output as separate
> features here. What do we do for to_char() with such separators?

Well, it isn't so much the input/output issue, but that the output
control is only in psql. Is that OK? I don't image we could ever put
input functionality in psql, only in the server.


--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

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