• bitfucker@programming.dev
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    3 months ago

    Yeah, but “elf” are not digits. Digits are a symbol abstracted from the language itself. Does 5 and V convey different meanings in the context of digits? And yeah, I can see why they would argue about the implementation because inclusivity is important. Especially when designing a language implementation. If you are designing it wrong, it will be very hard to extend it in the future. But for application level implementation, go nuts.

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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      3 months ago

      You are right, “elf” is a stretch, it does not make sense to parse it as a number. But in some languages, the string “15 240,5” is just how a number is written (yes, that’s a U+2009 THIN SPACE, you can’t stop me from using it as a thousand separator in German). Obviously, despite having a , on their numpads, German programmers still expect computers to parse numbers with decimal dots and interpret commas as list values.

      • bitfucker@programming.dev
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        3 months ago

        Alright, maybe you misunderstood the term digits with numbers. When parsing a digit, you do not attach semantic yet to the building blocks. A \d regex parser does not care that the string “555” is not equivalent to “VVV”. All it cares about is that there is the digit “5” or “V”. In the same vein, regex parser should not try to parse IV as a single symbol.

        • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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          3 months ago

          It’s not just digits. Nobody is expecting it to understand language yet but the parser is-number still returns true for "2e3" or "0x0F". It tells you whether the string can be interpreted as a real numeric value.

          • bitfucker@programming.dev
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            3 months ago

            Yeah, hence is-“number”. But we were talking about regex are we. A number representation can use digits but it can also not. Much like how you make a number using the word “elf”.

      • bitfucker@programming.dev
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        3 months ago

        As I said, a digit is a symbol. Much like how we use letters to compose words, digits are used to construct numbers. When you start to repeat or reuse the symbol then it is no longer a singular symbol (what regex \d does). Hence my comments on why arabic script are one of the understandable debates since i18n is a valid concern as much as a11y is.