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Something that strikes me here: Coming from a european standpoint, using commas as a delimiter for 3-digit groups seems like a very silly decision. In the germa

Something that strikes me here: Coming from a european standpoint, using commas as a delimiter for 3-digit groups seems like a very silly decision. In the german speaking regions, the apostrophe is generally used for this - which reduces the probability that someone could mistake it for a decimal mark. On the other hand, the Germans seem to use commas as decimal marks, which is even sillier. Both of those habits combined can cause much confusion if you're not sure where the data comes from...

endless1234 10y ago
>On the other hand, the Germans seem to use commas as decimal marks, which is even sillier. Yes, it's a bit silly that there are multiple decimal marks used, but why is the comma any sillier than the dot? Both are very widely used https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark#Hindu.E2.80.93Arabic_numeral_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark#Hindu.E2.80.93Ara...
- btschaegg 10y ago
  From a traditional (handwriting/typewriter) perspective, every symbol is just as valid as any other, of course. What I find to be a particularly bad decision is still using the comma in the "modern" context of computers. It's basically just doing things different for the difference's sake. The UK/US influence wrt. the notation of numbers in the computer age has been huge for historical reasons, with the effect that e.g. I know of no single programming language that uses a comma for this purpose. Clinging to the comma (for spreadsheets for example) adds no substantial benefit, but generates much confusion if you find yourself in an unexpected regional setting and your numpad starts to produce commas or your excel sheet stops returning sensible numbers. So, at least from my naive perspective, using comma and dots as two different digit separators is a bit silly because of their visual similarity, while continuing to use the comma for specific regions while the world of computing basically has (de facto-)standardized on other formats is sillyness that is actively maintained. One could essentially call it "notational cruft". It reminds me of the US not adopting the metric system - but at least, I can see a high mental barrier there (if you "think" in °F, °C will always be weird). Edit: Of course, no such post would be complete without to the NASA Mars Climate Orbiter [1], where exactly this effect (physics calculations are usually done in SI units) had caused rather costly practical issues. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
tauchunfall 10y ago
> In the german speaking regions, the apostrophe is generally used for this The apostrophe (') as delimiter for 3-digit groups is partly used in Switzerland. In Germany we use periods (.) as delimiter. >On the other hand, the Germans seem to use commas as decimal marks, which is even sillier. For me decimal marks are more important than digit group delimiters. And a period (.) is smaller than a comma (,). Thus we use a comma for the more important features of numbers. This is how I explained it to me in school. Of course, as a programmer, I'm pretty muched used to periods as decimal marks now. Edit: Add two sentences.
- dom0 10y ago
  Spaces are becoming more prevalent because they cause the least confusion (I also think they look nicer/cleaner).
shezi 10y ago
In Germany we don't use the apostrophe as a digit group separator. Instead, we use a small space, like so: 1 234 567 Edit: others suggest that a dot is used as group separator and it is sometimes seen. I believe that it is a more recent development, adding _even more_ confusion, if that is possible. DIN 1333 actively suggests _not_ to use a dot as group separator (WP: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schreibweise_von_Zahlen#Deutschland_und_.C3.96sterreich https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schreibweise_von_Zahlen#Deutsc...)
- tauchunfall 10y ago
  Yes. Spaces or periods. (Periods like in this sentence from a front page article on ZEIT online: "Dafür erhält GM weitere 900 Millionen Euro, so dass sich ein Gesamtvolumen von 2,2 Milliarden Euro ergibt. Betroffen sind rund 40.000 Angestellte in zwölf Fabriken.") Edit: >I believe that it is a more recent development, adding _even more_ confusion, if that is possible. Interesting. Using spaces in handwriting is more confusing though. We never used spaces on blackboards in school (at least in the 90s).
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
coldtea 10y ago
>Something that strikes me here: Coming from a european standpoint, using commas as a delimiter for 3-digit groups seems like a very silly decision. (...) On the other hand, the Germans seem to use commas as decimal marks, which is even sillier. Huh? From what I've seen across the world, it's either "commas for decimals marks and periods for 3-digit group delimiter", or the inverse ("periods for decimal mark and commas for 3-digit group delimiter"). I can understand finding one or the other "silly" (depending on what you are accustomed to), but you seem to find both of these combinations silly. Which is the third possibility that you consider non-silly? (Note: reading again, you seem to imply the apostrophe for groups and period for decimal mark is the best option. It might be, but is it used anywhere outside of Germany?)
- masklinn 10y ago
  > Which is the third possibility that you consider non-silly? Grouping separators include space (that's the SI style, using either comma or period as decimal separator), apostrophe and "˙" (DOT ABOVE). A few locales also use "·" (MIDDLE DOT) as decimal separators. Many modern languages allow interspersing "_" in numbers which replaces spaces for grouping.
- btschaegg 10y ago
  My basic gist is that a) Using dot and comma provokes mistakes, thus I call it "silly". b) Deviating from the dot as decimal mark in the context of computers is a bad idea™, because it violates a de facto standard in computing and introduces a myriad of regional conflicts without any benefit whatsoever.
pavlov 10y ago
And this is why CSV is one of the most broken file formats of all time. "Comma-separated values" for spreadsheets doesn't work when comma is the decimal separator. Localized versions of Excel decided to store numbers in the local format, and just used some other delimiter for their version of "CSV" (NCSV?). So what happens is that you open an American .csv file in a local Excel, and you get an unexplained mess. The same happens going the other way.
- dan1234 10y ago
  This isn’t a problem if you surround your field data with quote marks (this is also required if the field data contains newlines). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values#Basic_rules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values#Basic_r...
- kriro 10y ago
  You can select the separator when opening the file in LibreOffice Calc (don't have Excel on this machine but I know it's possible as well). Setting it to ";" fixes this for all European data sets I have worked with that use "," where "." would be used in the U.S. You can also specify the separator in pretty much every other tool that imports CSV (for example in R).
  - rb808 10y ago
    Pipe | is even better.
dan1234 10y ago
Grouping by decimal point or apostrophe would be just as confusing in the UK (where grouping by comma is the norm). In an ideal world, numbers would be formatted based on the user’s locale.

endless1234 10y ago

>On the other hand, the Germans seem to use commas as decimal marks, which is even sillier. Yes, it's a bit silly that there are multiple decimal marks used, but why is the comma any sillier than the dot? Both are very widely used https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark#Hindu.E2.80.93Arabic_numeral_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark#Hindu.E2.80.93Ara...

btschaegg 10y ago
From a traditional (handwriting/typewriter) perspective, every symbol is just as valid as any other, of course. What I find to be a particularly bad decision is still using the comma in the "modern" context of computers. It's basically just doing things different for the difference's sake. The UK/US influence wrt. the notation of numbers in the computer age has been huge for historical reasons, with the effect that e.g. I know of no single programming language that uses a comma for this purpose. Clinging to the comma (for spreadsheets for example) adds no substantial benefit, but generates much confusion if you find yourself in an unexpected regional setting and your numpad starts to produce commas or your excel sheet stops returning sensible numbers. So, at least from my naive perspective, using comma and dots as two different digit separators is a bit silly because of their visual similarity, while continuing to use the comma for specific regions while the world of computing basically has (de facto-)standardized on other formats is sillyness that is actively maintained. One could essentially call it "notational cruft". It reminds me of the US not adopting the metric system - but at least, I can see a high mental barrier there (if you "think" in °F, °C will always be weird). Edit: Of course, no such post would be complete without to the NASA Mars Climate Orbiter [1], where exactly this effect (physics calculations are usually done in SI units) had caused rather costly practical issues. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

tauchunfall 10y ago

> In the german speaking regions, the apostrophe is generally used for this The apostrophe (') as delimiter for 3-digit groups is partly used in Switzerland. In Germany we use periods (.) as delimiter. >On the other hand, the Germans seem to use commas as decimal marks, which is even sillier. For me decimal marks are more important than digit group delimiters. And a period (.) is smaller than a comma (,). Thus we use a comma for the more important features of numbers. This is how I explained it to me in school. Of course, as a programmer, I'm pretty muched used to periods as decimal marks now. Edit: Add two sentences.

dom0 10y ago
Spaces are becoming more prevalent because they cause the least confusion (I also think they look nicer/cleaner).

shezi 10y ago

In Germany we don't use the apostrophe as a digit group separator. Instead, we use a small space, like so: 1 234 567 Edit: others suggest that a dot is used as group separator and it is sometimes seen. I believe that it is a more recent development, adding _even more_ confusion, if that is possible. DIN 1333 actively suggests _not_ to use a dot as group separator (WP: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schreibweise_von_Zahlen#Deutschland_und_.C3.96sterreich https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schreibweise_von_Zahlen#Deutsc...)

tauchunfall 10y ago
Yes. Spaces or periods. (Periods like in this sentence from a front page article on ZEIT online: "Dafür erhält GM weitere 900 Millionen Euro, so dass sich ein Gesamtvolumen von 2,2 Milliarden Euro ergibt. Betroffen sind rund 40.000 Angestellte in zwölf Fabriken.") Edit: >I believe that it is a more recent development, adding _even more_ confusion, if that is possible. Interesting. Using spaces in handwriting is more confusing though. We never used spaces on blackboards in school (at least in the 90s).
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

coldtea 10y ago

>Something that strikes me here: Coming from a european standpoint, using commas as a delimiter for 3-digit groups seems like a very silly decision. (...) On the other hand, the Germans seem to use commas as decimal marks, which is even sillier. Huh? From what I've seen across the world, it's either "commas for decimals marks and periods for 3-digit group delimiter", or the inverse ("periods for decimal mark and commas for 3-digit group delimiter"). I can understand finding one or the other "silly" (depending on what you are accustomed to), but you seem to find both of these combinations silly. Which is the third possibility that you consider non-silly? (Note: reading again, you seem to imply the apostrophe for groups and period for decimal mark is the best option. It might be, but is it used anywhere outside of Germany?)

masklinn 10y ago
> Which is the third possibility that you consider non-silly? Grouping separators include space (that's the SI style, using either comma or period as decimal separator), apostrophe and "˙" (DOT ABOVE). A few locales also use "·" (MIDDLE DOT) as decimal separators. Many modern languages allow interspersing "_" in numbers which replaces spaces for grouping.
btschaegg 10y ago
My basic gist is that a) Using dot and comma provokes mistakes, thus I call it "silly". b) Deviating from the dot as decimal mark in the context of computers is a bad idea™, because it violates a de facto standard in computing and introduces a myriad of regional conflicts without any benefit whatsoever.

pavlov 10y ago

And this is why CSV is one of the most broken file formats of all time. "Comma-separated values" for spreadsheets doesn't work when comma is the decimal separator. Localized versions of Excel decided to store numbers in the local format, and just used some other delimiter for their version of "CSV" (NCSV?). So what happens is that you open an American .csv file in a local Excel, and you get an unexplained mess. The same happens going the other way.

dan1234 10y ago
This isn’t a problem if you surround your field data with quote marks (this is also required if the field data contains newlines). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values#Basic_rules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values#Basic_r...
kriro 10y ago
You can select the separator when opening the file in LibreOffice Calc (don't have Excel on this machine but I know it's possible as well). Setting it to ";" fixes this for all European data sets I have worked with that use "," where "." would be used in the U.S. You can also specify the separator in pretty much every other tool that imports CSV (for example in R).
- rb808 10y ago
  Pipe | is even better.

dan1234 10y ago

Grouping by decimal point or apostrophe would be just as confusing in the UK (where grouping by comma is the norm). In an ideal world, numbers would be formatted based on the user’s locale.