MySQL Bugs: #36372: format(X,D) european output request

Bug #36372	format(X,D) european output request
Submitted:	28 Apr 2008 11:17	Modified:	6 Oct 2008 13:20
Reporter:	Alexander Dewilde	Email Updates:
Status:	Verified	Impact on me:	None
Category:	MySQL Server: General	Severity:	S4 (Feature request)
Version:	5.0	OS:	Any (Mac OS X, Linux)
Assigned to:		CPU Architecture:	Any
Tags:	string functions

Description:
format(X,D) still returns US formatting.
Many users have requested this over time, and I remember seeing 'this should be internationalized at some point...' in MySQL source.

Untill now, it is impossible to achieve desired european formatting without having a huge speed penalty, whatever conversion technique is used.

How to repeat:
format(1234567.89) -> 1,234,567.89

what we need is 1.234.567,89 performed at same speed as above

Suggested fix:
A MySQL variable to choose thousand and decimal separator, much like the date or time setting variable at this point.

I think this should be a general client/session setting for all decimals!

Ideally a SETTABLE LOCAL system variable like DECIMAL_FORMAT {English|Continental|System} (where 'System' will fetch the LOCALE of the client machine).

Thank you for the reasonable feature reauest.

Workaround:

select replace(replace(replace(format(X, D), ',', '_'), '.', ','), '_', '.');

I do know several workarounds, but they all have severe speed penalties.

I still like this to be fixed... Any ideas about when it will finally be implemented?

Any progress on the requested feature?

If mysql is not planning to implement this feature,
maybe you should release the necessary code in order to do it yourself?

Yes, we do plan to implement this feature.
In the not too distant future even. But not in 5.0 or 5.1.