On Nov 20, 2014, at 1:35 PM, Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Sadly, this didn't work with OpenOffice - it was configured to follow the locale for the decimal separator but, in the custom locale, it didn't pick up the locale's decimal separator. Perhaps it got confused by an English-language locale with , as the decimal separator and . as the thousands separator, or perhaps not bothering to change the currency separators confused it, or something such as that.
Testing with LibreOffice on Ubuntu (temporarily changing the system locale to French, not just to "English, but with decimal and thousands separators not used in the Anglosphere", is a bit easier on a random VM rather than on my real desktop):
in the French locale, saving a spreadsheet as CSV uses comma as a field separator, comma as a decimal separator, and quotes all numerical fields that contain a decimal separator;
in the French locale, opening a CSV file in LibreOffice Calc defaults to supporting both comma and semicolon as field separators and, if I indicate that comma is *not* a field separator, handles a file using semicolon as a field separator and comma as a decimal separator and without fields being quoted.
I didn't see any option to override the locale's decimal separator, so that I could read a period-as-decimal-separator file in a locale in which comma is a decimal separator or *vice versa*.