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Comment by mywacaday | Hacker News Reader

I got 45690

Probably MM/DD (2 Jan) vs DD/MM (1 Feb) since Excel uses it's current locale for parsing. (=SUM in en-US, =SOMME in fr-CA for example... making any SaaS app in Canada that exports xlsx files is always rough.)

> any SaaS app in Canada that exports xlsx files

Why would you need to localize it there? I'm sure it's the Excel the user has is the one doing the localization, so I can email my French colleague an Excel file and the formula in B5 which is =SUM() on my machine will be =SOMME() on hers.

There's even sites for the dictionary of the function names, but googling "Excel french dictionary" gives you the top result that "That word in French is 'exceller'!"

(For good reason) Language is a picky thing in Canada, it's very important (when selling to the federal government or Québec) that both English and French localizations have equal footing.

To open a en-US XLSX file in a fr-CA copy of Excel, you will need the en-US language pack. If you make this a requirement for a Québec government entity... you will not get that contract.

> To open a en-US XLSX file in a fr-CA copy of Excel, you will need the en-US language pack

Are you sure? That sounds insane. Maybe if you're exporting a CSV where you insert the formulas as text, and expect the Excel to do some magic conversion..

I'm pretty sure that XLSX file is "universally" openable, and the user using the fr-CA copy of Excel will see =SOMME( ... ), doesn't matter what locale the source Excel is.

ChatGPT says:

> The Office Open XML specification, standardized as ECMA-376 and ISO/IEC 29500, defines how formulas are stored in XLSX files. It specifies that:

> Function names and formula grammar are stored in a locale-independent (invariant) format in the file — specifically, English-language function names.

> You can find this in: ECMA-376, Part 1: Fundamentals and Markup Language Reference, Section 18.17 “Formulas”

ChatGPT is often wrong, so this is meaningless unless you go and find the actual source.

Well, I'm sure you're smart enough to take that step given it's given us the directions.

For the purposes of this conversation I'm pretty confident what ChatGPT said is correct, feel free to look it up in case you doubt it.

You're making the claim, so it's your job to prove it, not ask some AI and get your opponent to do the legwork. Moreover I skimmed ECMA-376[1] and it doesn't mention anything about locale-invariant encoding for function names. The only mention was for the CELL function, which could accept multiple values depending on locale.

[1] https://github.com/QtExcel/ecma-376-5th/blob/master/ECMA-376...

It might have changed since I last had to deal with this (I hope!) but excel, at least ~5 years ago, was storing cell contents as they appear in the function box in the UI. As in, `1,23` is 1 and 23/100 when read in fr-CA, and this would apply to the function names as well. So `=SOMME(...)`. Excel is smart enough to pick up on a locale flag in the file format, but obviously it then shows you a dialog asking you to convert it, needing the language pack.

I also won't assume that we were making "good" excel documents. It's possible we were shipping badly made exports haha

Depends if you have American dates or normal dates, I guess

Only HN readership might take an iso order as normal I guess :D

ISO order is the correct order. 2025 April 7 or 2025-04-07 or whatever. Human-read numbers are big endian and dates should be big endian to maintain that consistency.

Also, America uses ISO order, we just use a comma. 2025 April 7 is the same as April 7, 2025. Just like Bill Gates is the same as Gates, Bill.

Username checks out.

> Human-read numbers are big endian and dates should be big endian to maintain that consistency.

... in English, anyway. A lot of languages are little-endian both for dates and for at least 2-digit numbers, if not larger numbers.

(Just in case your post isn't a joke.)

I'm half joking. We are writing numbers in big-endian in all the discussed formats (euro, american, iso) so I do think it makes sense to store dates in big endian to maintain consistency with that and lists and such. Otherwise people can do whatever makes sense culturally to them. Americans also write today's date like 4/7/2025 which is obviously middle endian lol

in my country you read and speak numbers 97 like 'seven and ninety'. this is normal.. :p

aslong as we dont base our endianess on how french pronounce or read nrs i think we can work with it.

that being said, i am for ISO notation if you want to order something in a list. year, month, day seems logical in this case as it will easily sort chronologically. i dont see another real reason why one would be better than another.

> aslong as we dont base our endianess on how french pronounce or read

If you're annoyed by French numbers (which come from Gauls counting in 20s) try numbers in Danish.

I am trying to learn Danish. I cannot agree with this enough.

Consider "halvtreds," the Danish word for 50. A reasonable person might expect it to mean "half-three" based on pattern recognition and the fact that tre is three. But no! It's actually a compressed version of "halvtredsindstyve," meaning "half-third-times-twenty" or (2.5 × 20).

This continues with "tres" (60), "halvfjerds" (70), and "firs" (80)—all using a vigesimal system that, if you studied French, seems reasonable.

Except, well, the Danes don't properly sanitize their inputs. "femoghalvfjerds" (75) translates to "five-and-half-fourth-times-twenty," combining decimal and vigesimal systems with zero regard for foreigners...

> "halvtredsindstyve," meaning "half-third-times-twenty" or (2.5 × 20).

And you even took a shortcut there, AIUI it's "three-minus-a-half" (and that many "twenty", vigesimal as you said) for the "2.5", kinda like roman numeral `IX` is nine ("ten minus one" because the `I` is before the `X`) so it's really an oddball mix of multiple ways to count.

(Source: my wife had a go with learning Danish as well, and we spent a little time going down that rabbit hole. I didn't even try, I'm sticking to easy things like Japanese)

Or Hungarians for example.

Apart from Scandinavia, Japan, and a few other places.

Google Sheets returns 45660 for '="1/2"+1'

I got "02-Feb" (as text, not a number) instead.

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