Item8463: TABLE sorting doesn't recognize numbers with commas

In the US, numbers in the thousands can be formatted with commas. TABLE does not recognize these as numbers when sorting.

In the example below,

|ct|12|0|0.00%|8|66.67%|12|

should sort at the top when the table is sorted on column #2.

Country	Total	Total RSS	% RSS	!SpaceID	% SpaceID	Non-Rss
at	1,128	0	0.00%	976	86.52%	1,128
aa	10,296	7,316	71.06%	800	7.77%	2,980
cf	11,040	9,280	84.06%	220	1.99%	1,760
au	13,660	9,088	66.53%	800	5.86%	4,572
cd	17,400	4,992	28.69%	7,004	40.25%	12,408
ar	26,476	18,056	68.20%	1,148	4.34%	8,420
chit	32	0	0.00%	24	75.00%	32
chfr	80	0	0.00%	36	45.00%	80
br	87,968	76,064	86.47%	2,984	3.39%	11,904
ca	110,808	94,960	85.70%	2,488	2.25%	15,848
ch	256	0	0.00%	152	59.38%	256

-- VickiBrown - 03 Feb 2010

NO! That will break things for most non-English speaking countries where we use the comma as decimal separator (radix point).

10,296 comes BEFORE 13,66. 110,808 comes before 256 in a comma context.

The table above sorts correctly in a comma radix context. If we fixed the sorting as suggested, sorting would break for us non-English.

The code is done correctly today to it works with numbers with a radix in both systems. This means that you cannot use a 1000 separator but it is better to live with this than breaking standard sorting for the rest of us.

The only way to fix this would be to have a setting that identifies the comma/dot scheme. In MS Excel you also define the decimal symbol as part of regional settings.

To put things in perspective these are examples of countries using comma: Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Canada (French-speaking), Costa Rica, Croatia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Faroes, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Honduras, Hungary, Indonesia, Iceland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, Macedonia, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam.

I am going to non-action this.

-- KennethLavrsen - 05 Feb 2010

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