.csv

Insights · 6 min read

Numeric locales in CSV: commas, decimals, and currency symbols

EU vs US number formats: thousand separators, decimal commas, and safe normalization before CAST.

Published March 21, 2025 · Table

A file from a German subsidiary may use 1.234,56 € while US systems expect 1234.56. Blind casting fails or silently drops precision.

Mitigation

  • Tag source locale in the filename or manifest.
  • Strip currency symbols in ETL, not in the legal source file.
  • Keep raw strings until a single normalization step owns the rules.

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