BDR> We could do better by insisting that "." was the decimal
BDR> point in all interval conversions _to_ numeric. Then the
BDR> effect of setting LC_NUMERIC would primarily be on
BDR> conversions _from_ numeric, especially printing and
BDR> graphical output. (One issue would be what to do with
BDR> scan(), which has a `dec' argument but is implemented
BDR> assuming LC_NUMERIC=C. I would hope to continue to have
BDR> `dec' but perhaps with a locale-dependent default.) The
BDR> resulting asymmetry (R would not be able to parse its own
BDR> output) would be unhappy, but seems inevitable. (This could
BDR> be implemented easily by having a `dec' arg to EncodeReal
BDR> and EncodeComplex, and using LC_NUMERIC to control that
BDR> rather than actually setting the local category. For
BDR> example, deparsing needs to be done in LC_NUMERIC=C.)
Yes, I like this quite a bit:
- Only allow "." as decimal point in conversions to numeric.
- Allowing "," (or other locale settings if there are) for
conversions _from_ numeric will be very attractive to some
(not to me) and will make the use of R's ``reporting
facility' much more natural to them.
That the asymmetry is bit unhappy -- and that will be a good reason
to advocate (to the user community) that using "," for decimal
point may be a bad idea in general.