To: "Jeroen T. Vermeulen" <jtv@xs4all.nl>
Cc: pgsql-interfaces@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: GetValue(), floats, and locales 
In-reply-to: <20030507133633.GD48885@xs4all.nl> 
References: <20030507133633.GD48885@xs4all.nl>
Comments: In-reply-to "Jeroen T. Vermeulen" <jtv@xs4all.nl>
	message dated "Wed, 07 May 2003 15:36:33 +0200"
Date: Wed, 07 May 2003 12:19:02 -0400
Message-ID: <27744.1052324342@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

"Jeroen T. Vermeulen" <jtv@xs4all.nl> writes:
> I just got a bothersome bug report from a libpqxx user in Hungary (where,
> as it turns out, floating-point numbers are written with decimal commas
> rather than decimal points).  It appears that libpq's GetValue() delivers
> floating-point fields in localized format.  The problem with this is that
> libpqxx then tries to parse the numbers using sscanf(), which apparently
> doesn't expect the number to have a decimal comma.

> This begs the question: is it libpq that represents these values using the
> client's locale, or does the server ship them in this form according to
> its own locale?

The server should always ship floats in "standard" representation.
AFAIK the only way to use localized numeric representations is to
write to_char() and to_number() calls (or use the money datatype).
If you can show us a case where plain float display does the other,
it's a bug.

libpq is not doing anything to you, in any case: it's far too stupid
to convert data at all ;-)

			regards, tom lane