ONE MARK · THREE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE
What is 1.234 worth?
In the Romanian profile, it means one thousand two hundred and thirty-four. In the British profile, it means one and 234 thousandths. The exact ratio between the values is 1,000.
CLDR 48.2.0 · 1.234
ro-RO · grouping mark
1.234 → 1,234
one thousand two hundred and thirty-four
en-GB · decimal mark
1.234 → 1.234
one and 234 thousandths
01 · MECHANISM
Convention gives the point its role
The decimal system gives each digit a value through its position. A mark between digits can open the fractional part or divide groups of thousands. It looks identical on the screen; the convention changes its job.
For Romanian, CLDR describes a decimal comma and a grouping point. For British English, it describes a decimal point and a grouping comma. When a string travels without its language, unit or currency, the information that fixes its value is missing.
02 · COMPARE
Put the same string through two profiles
Type a number or choose an example. The check preserves every digit and mark you enter.
Controlled match
The two profiles produce different values. The exact ratio between the values is 1,000:1.
03 · ATLAS
Twenty-eight rule families
A default decimal convention can be extracted from 766 locale entries in CLDR 48.2.0. Across the six characteristics compared here — digit system, the two marks, the two group sizes and grouping threshold — the entries form 28 families. The differences include the narrow no-break space, the apostrophe, Indian 3–2 grouping and Arabic separators.
Matches among 22 selected profiles
04 · CONSEQUENCE
Numbers that cross systems
A price copied into a spreadsheet, a limit placed in a contract or a measurement moved between forms can lose its convention on the way. The digits survive the copy while the mark loses its legend.
Safe notation states the unit or currency and uses an unambiguous number form for its audience. Between systems, sending the canonical value separately from its formatted display removes this ambiguity.
05 · BOUNDARY
What this page compares
The profiles follow Unicode CLDR 48.2.0, the publication that describes locale conventions used by many systems to display numbers. Each profile here is defined by its default digit system, decimal mark, grouping mark, group sizes and minimum grouping threshold.
The check is a controlled test for positive decimal numbers of up to 24 characters. It accepts ungrouped digits and any fractional length within that limit. Plus and minus signs, leading zeroes and exponents are outside the test. If grouping marks appear, their positions must follow the profile. The result describes this match; it does not predict every reader's choice or every application's permissive parsing rules.
Sources
The official definitions of decimal and grouping marks, group sizes and number symbols.
The official release page for the number profiles used here.
An introduction to the project and its role in software localisation.