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Event that is always highly annoying. How do you deal with (for example) Dutch decimal numbers, which use the comma for decimal separation, or numbers with a comma as a thousands separator?



'Dutch' notation can usually be distinguished with enough context (i.e. if the number has decimals), or by comparing it to other numbers found in a file.

But don't get me started on people mixing American date notation and ISO notation. Especially mixing the separators.

If you ever have to work with date notations, use a hyphen as a separator for ISO, and use a forward slash (/) when using American notation. It's the only way to distinguish dates before the 13th day of the month.


I am sorry to tell you the rest of the world also uses slash with dates, it's not just a US thing. But with same field order.


Please note that in The Netherlands, the most commonly used date format using '/' is day/month/year, not month/day/year as seen in the US.

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country




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