On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 5:42 PM, Greg L greg_l_at_wikipedia@comcast.net wrote:
If so, then we might as well throw up our hands that trying to delimit numbers via math functions is a lost cause.
Right.
I mean— it can be done— you just have to have the computer doing either symbolic manipulation in the right base, or doing effectively infinite precision math. There is software for this. It's complicated and probably doesn't belong in MediaWiki.
Joe random coder who tried to accomplish the same task (delimiting) in the same way (using math on floating point values) via any popular computer language would encounter the same problems.
What you really want, as far as I can tell, is string functions, not math.
Or… really what you want is a full programming language, with its compliment of iteration and string mangling functions, to handle your document formatting. Such a thing can be done safely to some degree or another (as our web-browsers prove), but I'll leave it to someone else to propose it. I'll just sit back and enjoy watching the messenger get stabbed. :)