[Fmt-Nu] French thousands separator is non-breaking space

Name: yyT116575 Date: 10/03/2001


Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.3.0-C)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.3.0-C, mixed mode)

This is an attempt to reopen bug 4350931.
That bug complained that the French thousands separator
(when formatting numbers) does not print. The bug was
closed; it was claimed that the thousands separator is a space.

It is true that the separator is a space, but it is a special non-breaking
space -- the character 0xA0. This means that if the user in a UI types
a number with (normal) spaces, the Java formatting code will reject it
with an error.

It's not even clear that this special space character will be displayed
as such in a HTML client. Certainly it will not occur to a user who
sees an existing value that he needs to type a funny space character.

The following source code shown the spaces will cause the number
be rejected.

import java.text.*;
import java.util.Locale;

public class French {
  public static void main(String args []) {
    NumberFormat form = NumberFormat.getInstance(Locale.FRENCH);
    form.setGroupingUsed(true);
    String fmt = form.format(123456.789);

    System.out.println("Here is the formatted value:");
    for (int i = 0; i < fmt.length(); i++) {
      System.out.print((int) (fmt.charAt(i)));
      System.out.println(" " + fmt.charAt(i));
    }

    String fmtAsSpace = "123 456,789";
    System.out.println("About to parse " + fmtAsSpace);

    try {
      System.out.println(form.format(fmtAsSpace));
    } catch (Exception e) {
      System.out.println(e.getMessage());
    }
  }
}

Here is the output:

Here is the formatted value:
49 1
50 2
51 3
160 ?
52 4
53 5
54 6
44 ,
55 7
56 8
57 9
About to parse 123 456,789
Cannot format given Object as a Number
(Review ID: 132812)
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