How can I recognize automatically the List Separator in the Region and Languages settings?

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Hi, I want to make a .csv export in a Matlab tool. The tool can be used either by users using a List separator "," or ";". How can I get automatically the List separator of the user's computer, so that I can make a .csv export with this delimiter?
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Stephen23
Stephen23 on 14 Jun 2017
Edited: Stephen23 on 14 Jun 2017
Most languages that use ; as the separator do so because they use , as the decimal radix marker (i.e. decimal point in English). Will you also try to convert the decimal radix marker to a comma?

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Answers (2)

Arnav Mendiratta
Arnav Mendiratta on 13 Jun 2017
This question has 2 parts:
1. How to get the delimiter from the Region and Languages settings?
  • I don't know of any Windows API that lets you do this. Maybe there are tools where you can directly query this. However, I am not sure. If you somehow have this within MATLAB you can save the file with this specific delimiter.
2. How to save a CSV file with this delimiter.
  • In any case, you need to specify what delimiter to use to save a file. Once you have access to this delimiter, you can use a simple if check to save the file in any supported format, such as dlmwrite .

Simon Hancock
Simon Hancock on 3 May 2018
You can use the following Windows API to get the list seperator:
GetLocaleInfo(LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT, LOCALE_SLIST, szBuf, sizeof(szBuf))
This could be called from a C-MEX file, returning a string to Matlab.

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