Numerals across code pages

From: vainateya (vainateya@cdac.in)
Date: Fri Feb 19 2010 - 06:57:47 CST

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    We are facing problems with operating with numerals from various code pages.

    Are there any available standards, to which applications, databases,
    programming environments, etc. must comply,
    while handling Numbers in different scripts,
    including - processing Arithmetic operations, Logical operations with such
    data.

     case 1 - Basic math operations (+, - , / , * ) when both params are from
    non ascii numerals
                    - is such processing allowed or not.
                     - if digits across scripts are to be treated as
    programmatically equivalent, then result will be in which script?

     case 2 - logical comparison operators across scripts :

                     eg: if n < m do something

                            // (for simplifying, lets assume both as character
    variables / single digits)
                            with n = 4 m = 5 should succeed
                            however it might fail if n is hindi numeral 4 and m
    is english 5 (ASCII = 53), simply because of ascii / rather unicode value of
    hindi numeral 4 is greater.

                    similarly -
                        input n,m
                            if m == 0
                                return (cannot divide by zero)
                            else
                                output n /m

                    This gets handled by environment where ascii value of 'm'
    ASCII = 48 is compared not ASCII = 0 - but using which standard / rule does
    the programming environment behave this way.
                    What's the behaviour when m is a 0 from some other script /
    code page.

                    Similar problems arise while sorting such data.

    case 3 - things get more complex if we are dealing with complex datatypes
    such as date and time,
             eg : routine checks gets system time and checks if it past 5:00 pm
                but if the system / locale settings or related service, return
    the time in local language, then condition may fail.

    Different programming environments and applications seem to treat such
    scenarios differently, most seem to expect an application level code /
    routine which maps to equivalent ASCII before further processing or database
    select query.

    Are there any standards / locale settings that help in determining the
    expected behaviour.

    regards,
    Mr. Vainateya Koratkar
    Team Coordinator,
    C-DAC GIST Pune. 

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