Using C23 digit separators not locale digit grouping characters

Brian Inglis
2023-01-28T20:41:51Z

Hi folks,

Seeing the recent tv_nsec patches drop the standard locale digit grouping
characters "," from the member range [0-999,999,999] made me regret the loss of
the punctuation which provides better and quicker comprehension of long strings
of digits.

It may be time to consider using the locale independent C23 digit separator
characters "'" wherever more than a handful of digits occur, possibly convert
grouping character uses in existing man pages as they are changed, and specify a
future standard policy approach to provide better and quicker comprehension of
long strings of digits: perhaps using a new digit separator register and glyph
escape sequence \*ds \*[ds] \[ds] \(ds if not in use by base groff?

As well as the recently modified pages:

clock_getres.2
timer_settime.2
timerfd_create.2
utimensat.2

there appear to be obvious occurrences in only the following pages:

futex.2
read.2
sendfile.2
write.2
mallopt.3
keyrings.7
mq_overview.7
sched.7
time_namespaces.7

but there appear to be about 400 pages with more than 6 decimal digit strings
(some spurious glibc hex commits and address outputs) where it could perhaps
help, such as in POSIX version dates e.g. 2001'12L, and undoubtedly more with
long digit strings in other radixes.

--
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada

La perfection est atteinte Perfection is achieved
non pas lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à ajouter not when there is no more to add
mais lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à retirer but when there is no more to cut
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry