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So s/cent/atomic subunit/, because "for money, work in cents" is meaningless for yen and ambiguous for Bitcoin ("bitcents" or "satoshis"?)



If only people reading my comment had some sort of brain with which to interpret it instead of being doomed to apply only the exact literal meaning.


I'm afraid you ask too much of the Internet.


Yes, he clearly should have taken into account any possible subunit denomination, including exotic native tribe money units like sea shells, because international programmers reading HN are not expected to think of that of their own.


Such vitriol! Can your currency code handle sea shells? It should! :)

I only mention it because the yen thing surprised me once as a newbie programmer. (A tip: "%0.2f" is no substitute for actual i18n.) It never hurts to be aware of the edge cases.


>Can your currency code handle sea shells?

I'm afraid it mine can only handle sea shells!

>I only mention it because the yen thing surprised me once as a newbie programmer.

So what's the yen thing? How does it differ?


The yen has no fractional units (anymore), so when I added support for that currency but continued to use the same format string as all the others, prices like ¥1000.00 looked unnatural.


The historical subunit of the yen is the "sen" (銭), which you often seen mentioned in prewar books. Postwar inflation made sen-denominated currency obsolete, but...

[A bit of googling also turns up the "rin" (厘), which is a thousandth of a yen...]




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