commasep-num.mrg

#!/bin/bash

# Returns a passed number as comma-separated e.g. pass $1 = 80000000000 and receive 80,000,000,000
# REF: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/113795/add-thousands-separator-in-a-number

function commanum () { 
  LC_NUMERIC=en_US printf "%'.f" $1
}

# test for interactive shell / OK to echo text 
#[ $(echo $- |grep i |wc -l) -gt 0 ] && 
[ ! "$1" = "" ] && commanum $1

exit;

# Example usage:
#$ tmpvar=$(./commasep-num.mrg 80000000000)
#$ echo $tmpvar
#80,000,000,000
# Limitation: it doesn't handle fractional numbers x.xx , just integers - anything after the decimal gets dropped
# so don't try to display π (pi) with it ;-)

# this appears to work somewhat with fractionals but is not bash-internal:
#$ echo 1232323.1415927 | awk '{printf(fmt,$1)}' fmt="%'19.19f\n"
#1,232,323.1415927000343799591