Re: Intended scope of "set locale" and "set decimalsign"?

[Petr M. <mi...@ph...>]

> Questions
> =========
> The current documentation for "set decimal locale" is incorrect for
> both 4.2 and CVS; it is not applied to "all input and output".
> 
> - Should the locale be applied to data output via "set table 'filename'"?
>   Both 4.2 and CVS do this, although it is not specifically documented.    
> 
> - Should the locale be applied to output from "print foo"?
>   4.2 does this; CVS does not.
> 
> - Should the locale be applied to output from "show variables"?
>   Neither 4.2 nor CVS does this.
> 
> I am inclined to say "yes" to the first, and "no" to the other two.
> But it's not a strong opinion.

I agree.
An option "set table 'filename' {no}locale" could be added to allow this 
particular choice.

> - What do we really want the "set locale" command to do?

Two principle ways of usage:
- produce graphs with "," in decimal numbers
- read datafiles with ","

> Sorry, this is probably not very helpful, but from experience with 
> gretl I'd say: use of anything other than '.' as decimal separator 
> is evil

We have to accept that "," is traditional in many european countries.