Re: thousands comma numeric formatting in psql

Eugen Nedelcu wrote:
> Regarding locale aproach, it is trivial to replace langinfo with
> localeconv:
>
> struct lconv *l = localeconv();
> char *dec_point = l->decimal_point;
>
> instead of:
>
> #include langinfo.h
> char *dec_point = nl_langinfo(__DECIMAL_POINT);
>
> I used langinfo because in linux libc it is considered
> "The Elegant and Fast Way" of using locale and conforms with
> X/Open portability guide that every modern Unix follows
> (Solaris, Linux, latest FreeBSD).
>
> Regarding locale vs. \pset numericsep, for me it doesn't matter
> which one is used. I consider the patch very usefull, and I think
> that other guys that use psql daily for working with financial data
> will appreciate it too.
>
> With a quick setting like \pset numericsep ',' all my numeric fields
> will appear in easy readable form. I must underline that to_char is
> a backend function and we talk here about a little psql feature which
> makes life a little easier (for me at least).

OK, I have applied the following patch to make numerisep a boolean, made
it locale-aware, set defaults if the locale doesn't return meaningful
values, added code to handle locale-reported groupings, and updated the
documentation.

The only question I have is whether those locale values are single-byte
strings in all locals, or could they be multi-byte or multi-character,
in which case I have to treat them as strings. For now, I added a code
comment that we treat them as single-byte strings.

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