Bug report #8332

QGIS uses comma as decimal separator for shapefile attribute data

Added by marisn - about 11 years ago. Updated over 6 years ago.

Status:Closed
Priority:Normal
Assignee:-
Category:Data Provider/OGR
Affected QGIS version:master Regression?:No
Operating System: Easy fix?:No
Pull Request or Patch supplied:No Resolution:up/downstream
Crashes QGIS or corrupts data:No Copied to github as #:17120

Description

I'm using QGIS with Latvian locale. It's decimal separator is comma and thousands separator - point.

When creating new object, QGIS allows to use only point as a decimal separator (OK. So be it). Still in DBF file it's written with comma as a decimal separator and thus only QGIS sees a correct value. Other programs, like ogr2ogr and dbfdump see only whole part of number and drop anything after decimal separator (floor to integer with all 0's after comma). cat'ing DBF file is displaying correct comma separated values.

Attachment contains few points from a larger shapefile that is correctly readable only by QGIS.

QGIS versija 1.9.0-Master QGIS code revision e0a0a3a
Compiled against Qt 4.8.4 Running against Qt 4.8.4
Compiled against GDAL/OGR 1.10.0 Running against GDAL/OGR 1.10.0

cat comma_separated.dbf:
68,50010k
66,30010k

ogrinfo:
AUGSTUMS (Real) = 68.000
PIEZIMES (String) = 10k
AUGSTUMS (Real) = 66.000
PIEZIMES (String) = 10k

comma_separated.zip - Shapefile with comma separated attribute values (1.72 KB) marisn -, 2013-07-20 09:41 AM

data_with_locale.zip (148 KB) Marco Bernasocchi, 2017-02-06 02:21 PM

locale_bug.zip (151 KB) Marco Bernasocchi, 2017-02-07 08:39 AM


Related issues

Related to QGIS Application - Bug report #6110: KML export is generating decimal separators depending on ... Closed 2012-07-27

Associated revisions

Revision c64a051b
Added by Jürgen Fischer over 10 years ago

ogr provider: write numeric data in C locale (fixes #8332)

History

#1 Updated by Jürgen Fischer about 11 years ago

  • Status changed from Open to Feedback

Platform? On Linux I couldn't reproduce the problem - even with LANG=lv_LV.UTF-8 (although I figure de_DE should have the same problem).

#2 Updated by marisn - about 11 years ago

Gentoo Linux ~AMD64

$ locale
LANG=lv_LV
LC_CTYPE="lv_LV.utf8" 
LC_NUMERIC="lv_LV.utf8" 
LC_TIME="lv_LV.utf8" 
LC_COLLATE="lv_LV.utf8" 
LC_MONETARY="lv_LV.utf8" 
LC_MESSAGES="lv_LV.utf8" 
LC_PAPER="lv_LV.utf8" 
LC_NAME="lv_LV.utf8" 
LC_ADDRESS="lv_LV.utf8" 
LC_TELEPHONE="lv_LV.utf8" 
LC_MEASUREMENT="lv_LV.utf8" 
LC_IDENTIFICATION="lv_LV.utf8" 
LC_ALL=lv_LV.utf8

Here's output of a new shapefile created with QGIS:

$ cat rm_comma_test.dbf 
_▒aidN
skaitlisN
 **********     3,400 **********     6,500
$ dbfdump rm_comma_test.dbf 
        id   skaitlis 
    (NULL)      3.000 
    (NULL)      6.000 

As it's visible, 3,4 and 6,5 are turning into 3.0 and 6.0 in dbfdump and ogrinfo output. Interestingt that QGIS accepts only 3.5 not 3,5 in it's attribute data form, still stores with comma.

#3 Updated by Jürgen Fischer about 11 years ago

marisn - wrote:

As it's visible, 3,4 and 6,5 are turning into 3.0 and 6.0 in dbfdump and ogrinfo output. Interesting that QGIS accepts only 3.5 not 3,5 in it's attribute data form, still stores with comma.

strange. Doesn't happen here on debian. What type does the field have? Which OGR version is in play?

#4 Updated by marisn - about 11 years ago

ogrinfo rm_comma_test.shp rm_comma_test
INFO: Open of `rm_comma_test.shp'
      using driver `ESRI Shapefile' successful.

Layer name: rm_comma_test
Geometry: Point
Feature Count: 2
Extent: (632458.729239, 382529.825215) - (646246.187935, 389491.361737)
Layer SRS WKT:
PROJCS["LKS92_Latvia_TM",
    GEOGCS["GCS_LKS92",
        DATUM["Latvia_1992",
            SPHEROID["GRS_1980",6378137,298.257222101]],
        PRIMEM["Greenwich",0],
        UNIT["Degree",0.017453292519943295]],
    PROJECTION["Transverse_Mercator"],
    PARAMETER["latitude_of_origin",0],
    PARAMETER["central_meridian",24],
    PARAMETER["scale_factor",0.9996],
    PARAMETER["false_easting",500000],
    PARAMETER["false_northing",-6000000],
    UNIT["Meter",1]]
id: Integer (10.0)
skaitlis: Real (10.3)
OGRFeature(rm_comma_test):0
  id (Integer) = (null)
  skaitlis (Real) = 3.000
  POINT (646246.187935094581917 382529.825215096992906)

OGRFeature(rm_comma_test):1
  id (Integer) = (null)
  skaitlis (Real) = 6.000
  POINT (632458.729239132953808 389491.361736992374063)

ogrinfo --version
GDAL 1.10.0, released 2013/04/24

#5 Updated by marisn - about 11 years ago

  • Target version changed from Version 2.0.0 to Future Release - High Priority

Still an issue with 2.x
QGIS versija 2.1.0-Master QGIS code revision b2396f6
Compiled against Qt 4.8.5 Running against Qt 4.8.5
Compiled against GDAL/OGR 1.10.0 Running against GDAL/OGR 1.10.0

#6 Updated by Giovanni Manghi over 10 years ago

  • Status changed from Feedback to Open

#7 Updated by Jürgen Fischer over 10 years ago

  • Status changed from Open to Closed

#8 Updated by Andrey Isakov about 10 years ago

  • Status changed from Closed to Reopened

Same issue for me under Debian testing.
QGIS 2.4.0-Chugiak
Compiled against GDAL/OGR 1.10.1 Running against GDAL/OGR 1.10.1

andrey@crt-s1:~$ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8" 
LC_NUMERIC=ru_RU.utf8
LC_TIME=ru_RU.utf8
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8" 
LC_MONETARY=ru_RU.utf8
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8" 
LC_PAPER=ru_RU.utf8
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8" 
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8" 
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8" 
LC_MEASUREMENT=ru_RU.utf8
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8" 
LC_ALL=

QGIS using the system locale uses comma as decimal separator instead of point.
If QGIS started using the LC_NUMERIC="C" qgis then decimal separator is point.
Related issue #6110

#9 Updated by Jürgen Fischer almost 10 years ago

  • Category set to Data Provider/OGR

#10 Updated by Jürgen Fischer over 8 years ago

  • Status changed from Reopened to Feedback

The commit should fix the production of shape files. A newly created shape file shouldn't have commas. It doesn't fix the use of the broken comma_separated.shp. And I can't get QGIS to produce those broken files anymore. Does that still happen for others?

#11 Updated by Giovanni Manghi over 8 years ago

  • Status changed from Feedback to Closed
  • Resolution set to not reproducable

closing for lack of feedback. Please reopen if necessary.

#12 Updated by Marco Bernasocchi over 7 years ago

I just had a client producing the attached file in QGIS 2.18 which contains commas as separator in the dbf file. I also found a potential problem in gdal and reported it https://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/6804

#13 Updated by Marco Bernasocchi over 7 years ago

I did more investigation and the issue seem to be in QgsVectorFileWriter.writeAsVectorFormat.
I wrote a test script

# use any locale with comma decimal separator
test_locale = 'it_IT.UTF-8'
orig_path = './test_data.shp'

# this file will have numbers with comma in the dbf
dest_path = './result.shp'

# end config

import sys, locale
from qgis.core import QgsVectorFileWriter, QgsVectorLayer, QgsApplication

# init QGIS
qgs = QgsApplication(sys.argv, False)
qgs.initQgis()

l = QgsVectorLayer(orig_path, 'test layer', 'ogr')
print 'feature Count %s' % l.featureCount()

old_locale = locale.getlocale(locale.LC_NUMERIC)
locale.setlocale(locale.LC_NUMERIC, test_locale)
QgsVectorFileWriter.writeAsVectorFormat(l, dest_path, 'UTF-8', l.crs(), 'ESRI Shapefile')
locale.setlocale(locale.LC_NUMERIC, old_locale)

msg = 'open %s with a text editor and you should find numbers separated by comma'
print msg % dest_path.replace('shp', 'dbf')

looks to me like this #20ea3e2f5a13857857f014938d33f84cd17ed785#diff-2572d1079b3ce82d94d0d5fef972b795R1727 is not working

Attached are some test data and the minimal script to reproduce the issue. You just need a locale that uses a comma as decimal separator

#14 Updated by Giovanni Manghi over 7 years ago

  • Status changed from Reopened to Feedback
  • Priority changed from High to Normal
  • Crashes QGIS or corrupts data changed from Yes to No

Attached are some test data and the minimal script to reproduce the issue. You just need a locale that uses a comma as decimal separator

what versions are still affected? 2.18.4 and as well master/qgis3?

#15 Updated by Giovanni Manghi over 7 years ago

  • Target version deleted (Future Release - High Priority)
  • Status changed from Feedback to Open

#16 Updated by Giovanni Manghi over 7 years ago

  • Regression? set to No
  • Easy fix? set to No

#17 Updated by Even Rouault almost 7 years ago

  • Description updated (diff)
  • Status changed from Open to Feedback

@marco Do you reproduce with recent GDAL versions ? Normally this issue has been fixed in GDAL 2.0

#18 Updated by Giovanni Manghi over 6 years ago

  • Resolution set to up/downstream
  • Status changed from Feedback to Closed

Even Rouault wrote:

@marco Do you reproduce with recent GDAL versions ? Normally this issue has been fixed in GDAL 2.0

assuming this is fixed in GDAL, please reopen if necessary.

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