From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Thu Nov 27 2003 - 11:35:09 EST
Arcane Jill writes:
> It has been explained to me that the "decimal digit" property has the
> following meaning: "Decimal numbers are those using in decimal-radix
> number systems. In particular, the sequence of the ONE character
> followed by the TWO character is interpreted as having the value
> of twelve".
>
> What's the point of such a property?
>
> I mean, it's quite clearly ignored in sentences like "My phone number is
> 0044-1727-6000000", or "The codepoint of the space character is U+0020".
The role of this property is not to say that the digits MUST have a
radix-10 meaning, as digits can be used in any radix system.
But to say that these digits CAN safely be used to represent numbers
in decimal positional systems, where the sequence of digits can be
interpreted with the correct number value.
Of course you've got uses of decimal digits in other radix or numerioc
notations, such as phone numbers, Social Security numbers, postal codes,
hexadecimal numbers, symbolic Unicode code point notations...
These are another use, but the property is not intended to limit the
use of these digits exclusively to decimal positional number notations,
but to say whever the common interpretation of a sequence made of digits
in the same script will be a decimal positional notation, in absence of
another semantic context.
So, suppose that a script uses exclusively radix-12 digits, and that these
digits, when specified together and positionally have a normal
interpretation implying the 12 radix. These digits won't be assigned a
decimal digit property, even though they could be used to represent decimal
numbers
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