Create Language method for human-readable numbers
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	Tgr
	Oct 28 2019, 3:49 AM

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For user-friendly rendering of large numbers (such as monthly page view metrics of the site), we might want to have a way of formatting numbers in a human-readable fashion, such as "60 million" or "30 thousand" - something similar to Language::formatComputingNumbers().

Potential complications:

Unlike computing numbers, for real numbers sometimes the leading part of the number might need to be formatted as as well. "1 TB" sounds OK; "1 billion views" sounds awkward. That should be "one billion" or maybe "a billion".
Consequently, the formatted number might start with a letter, which means we should be able to differentiate between upper- and lowercase.
I'm sure there's some language out there which doesn't use 10^3-based grouping...

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Mentioned In: T230333: Impact Module: number of pageviews in mobile impact preview should be abbreviated
T236050: Newcomer tasks: Footer for suggested edits module

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Tgr created this task.Oct 28 2019, 3:49 AM

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald TranscriptOct 28 2019, 3:49 AM

Tgr moved this task from Inbox to Sprint 0 (Growth Team) on the Growth-Team board.Oct 28 2019, 3:50 AM

Tgr edited projects, added: Growth-Team (Sprint 0 (Growth Team)); removed: Growth-Team.

Tgr mentioned this in T236050: Newcomer tasks: Footer for suggested edits module.

JTannerWMF moved this task from Incoming to Ready for Development on the Growth-Team (Sprint 0 (Growth Team)) board.Oct 29 2019, 2:35 PM

It was determined that it is okay if we do not get this task in for the first 1.0 deployment.

Tgr added a project: Technical-Debt.Oct 29 2019, 3:40 PM

I'm sure there's some language out there which doesn't use 10^3-based grouping...

Yes. Indic languages use 10^3 for the first group, then increments of 10^2 for all subsequent groups:

> $lang = Language::factory('hi');

> echo $lang->formatNum(123456789);
१२,३४,५६,७८९
> echo $lang->commafy(123456789);
12,34,56,789

(The first result is like 12,34,56,789 but using Hindi numerals)

Consequently, the words used to describe large numbers in India (even when speaking English) are "thousand" (=10^3), "lakh" (=10^5) and "crore" (=10^7).

Dyolf77_WMF subscribed.Nov 5 2019, 3:09 PM

MBinder_WMF added a project: Growth-Team-Filtering.Apr 15 2021, 6:51 PM

Tgr mentioned this in T230333: Impact Module: number of pageviews in mobile impact preview should be abbreviated.Nov 23 2022, 8:32 PM

Urbanecm_WMF removed projects: Growth-Team-Filtering, Growth-Team.Oct 27 2025, 11:51 PM

Create Language method for human-readable numbersOpen, Needs TriagePublicActions

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Create Language method for human-readable numbers
Open, Needs TriagePublic
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