1.4. Special Locale Keys for Price Representation

Interchange honors the standard POSIX keys:

   mon_decimal_point    or      decimal_point
   mon_thousands_sep    or      thousands_sep
   currency_symbol      or      int_currency_symbol
   frac_digits  or      p_cs_precedes

See the POSIX setlocale(3) man page for more information. These keys will be used for formatting prices and approximates the number format used in most countries. To set a custom price format, use these special keys:

price_picture

Interchange will format a currency number based on a "picture" given to it. The basic form is:

            Locale en_US price_picture "$ ###,###,###.##"

The en_US locale, for the United States, would display 4452.3 as $ 4,452.30. The same display can be achieved with:

             Locale en_US mon_thousands_sep ,
             Locale en_US mon_decimal_point .
             Locale en_US p_cs_precedes     1
             Locale en_US currency_symbol   $

A common price_picture for European countries would be ###.###.###,##, which would display that same number as 4.452,30. To add a franc notation at the end for the locale fr_FR, use the setting:

            Locale fr_FR price_picture "##.###,## fr"

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IMPORTANT NOTE: The decimal point in use, set by mon_decimal_point, and the thousands separator, set by mon_thousands_sep must match the settings in the price_picture. The frac_digits setting is not used in this case. It is derived from the location of the decimal (if any).

---

The same setting for fr_FR above can be achieved with:

             Locale fr_FR mon_thousands_sep .
             Locale fr_FR mon_decimal_point ,
             Locale fr_FR p_cs_precedes     0
             Locale fr_FR currency_symbol   fr

If the number of digits is greater than the # locations in the price_picture, the digits will be changed to asterisks. An overflow number above would show as **.***,** fr.

picture

Same as price_picture, but sets the value returned if the [currency] tag is not used. If the number of digits is greater than the # locations in the picture, the digits will be changed to asterisks, displaying something like **,***.**.