QIF Import: reasonable assumptions?

[Derek Atkins]

Benoit Grégoire <bock at step.polymtl.ca> writes:

> On July 7, 2003 12:48 pm, Derek Atkins wrote:
> > I'm trying to decide if I can make a reasonable assumption: is it
> > reasonable to assume that a QIF file will use the same format/notation
> > for all numeric values?  What I mean is that some locales use decimal
> > notation (comma is a group separator and period is the decimal
> > separator) and some locales use comma notation (period is a group
> > separator and comman is the decimal separator).  Is it reasonable
> > to assume that ALL numerics will be in the same format?
> 
> I think that's reasonnable.  I know we've seen some pretty fucked up QIF 
> files, but I don't see HOW a program could output mixed numeric formats by 
> accident (unless it stores it's internal values as text strings and 
> interprets them as needed).

Well, that's part of the question.  Both existing qif importers
test each numeric value separately.  This seems like a lot of work
to me, but I'm wondering if there is a reason that it's done this
way.  I don't know.

It would certainly be easier (IMHO) to test them all at once, but I
could add the infrastructure to test them individually.  I'm just not
sure which to do..

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
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