CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptinternationalization
Balage
Balage

Reputation: 174

parsing international numerals

I'm trying to figure out how my script will behave if rendered in a browser using Chinese (or other) locale using Chinese numerals (or another non-Latin symbol set). Can't seem to find any info on this on the interwebs.

Looking at the page https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Number/toLocaleString we see examples of localized numbers when converting from number to string, but what about the other way around? I tried parseInt("一二三") in IE11 debug console which returned NaN, but I'm not using Chinese Windows. Could someone test this?

My confusion comes from JavaScript having loosely typed data, so what if I end up running into an implicit string-to-number conversion, such as this:

var a = "١٢٣";
var b = .01;
console.log(a*b);

Mind you my variables a and b could come from user input in a more complex example. How can you make sure that input coming from a non-Latin symbology is converted to the right number-representation internally before you do arithmetic if parseInt and implicit conversion don't work?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 208

Answers (1)

ShaneQful
ShaneQful

Reputation: 2236

It won't work for several reasons. Notice firstly that while there is a toLocalString but there is no parseLocalStringInt or fromLocaleString. Secondly javascript only really does implicit type coercion when particular operators are used e.g. ==. * however can't be used in this fashion and even == and other operators only support very limited coercion in comparison with what you are describing.

This coercion can still be very dangerous or useful depending on your point of view e.g. 0 == false is true but 0 === false is false but it certainly isn't as powerful and you think it is.

Upvotes: 1

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