Re: Locale definitions, dots and commas

[wallace owen l-3com com]

On Thu, 2008-03-13 at 16:46 +0000, Dave Howorth wrote:
> Martin (OpenGeoMap) wrote:
>
> > Yes 22 m is the same as 22.000 m
>
> No, they are not the same. The second one says that something is known
> to within a mm. The first does not.
>
> > PERL Regular expresions are great in C also, but better in perl and 
> > Ruby  8-)
> > To learn a little about regular expresion you need a PERL book:
> > http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/regex/
>
> Thanks but I have a few. I program in Perl (as well as C etc)
>
> > > Bad example.  22 can be expressed exactly in 2s complement.  3 cannot.
>
> The issue is nothing to do with computer representation. Look up
> 'significant figures'.

Ahh, now I know what you're getting on about.  Yes, it's a serious
issue.  One must either ascribe responsibility of interpretation to the
user or reveal the accuracy of the numbers provided.

The most serious case I know is navigation systems, where cosine
equations for longitude will encounter issues with the transcendentals
as the location approaches the poles.  If you're not aware of this, you
can end up lost and cold.


  // Wally

> Cheers, Dave
> _______________________________________________
> gtk-app-devel-list mailing list
> gtk-app-devel-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-app-devel-list
-- 
Wallace Owen L-3Com com
Office: 619.278.2084
Cell:   619.990.2286