Nicholas Bodley wrote:

> Surely, electronic calculators must be relatively commonplace
> in lands where the Arabic alphabet is primary. Being a
> retired electronic tech. and calculator enthusiast, I'm
> especially curious to know whether these lands use
> calculators that display correct numeral glyphs for their
> culture.

Notice that many Arab countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon...) use
European digits nowadays.

> On a related matter, I find it not the easiest to learn how
> these lands write numbers with thousands separators and
> decimal points. The "Arabic-Indic" zero can't be confused
> with a decimal point, of course.

The decimal "point" is a typical convention of English-speaking countries;
many countries prefer a decimal *comma*. :-)

Arabs have a special comma to serve as a decimal separator. It looks like
the Western comma (the Arabic comma is upside-down) and, not casually, it
looks like a small letter waw ("و"). Notice, BTW, that the Arabic for "and",
"wa", and is spelled with a waw.

_ Marco