Remove currency property on number in JTS

I am considering removing the currency property on the number type as I am unclear on its exact use e.g.:

• how should this be parsed or is parsing “undefined” other than that this is a currency (does that just mean strip all non-numeric characters
• are you supposed to be able to determine the currency

I believe it was introduced by @pwalsh here: https://github.com/dataprotocols/dataprotocols/commit/d8f80414964f8ecef186679f500d17554c4135f5#diff-8bee37e143f0d0ee3d1c0bc8eab91a5eR252

One option is that this is just saying: hey this is a currency and its up to you to parse but we should then make the explicit.

[ezwelty]

Having read through several of the issues on the topic of numbers… may I make a suggestion?

Numbers should be numeric. Currencies and percentages are a type of unit, and these should be defined in the metadata, not the data. If it’s really necessary to allow publishers to create bloated numeric data that won’t parse properly using standard tools… then bareNumber seems like a reasonable option.

Side note: I would also advocate for the removal of groupChar (default: none) and either the removal of decimalChar (default: “.”) or allow only “.” or “,” as possible values. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark#Current_standards.

[rufuspollock]

I guess I would have assumed that anyone writing a json file would also be capable of using find-and-replace to strip spurious characters.

@ezwelty consider a publisher who is expert but is packaging an upstream data file they don’t control. That is actually a common case. Often there is a strong aversion to changing that data file (e.g. it may come from another government department and it is important it is not altered as it is official). In this case the publisher is expert but they can’t change the data.

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-$1.00

That is a good example. You could address if written as $-1.00 which is imperfect but which we might have to support for now.

BTW I’m really impressed with your corner case identification – please keep your feedback coming it is really valuable 🍕 👍 💯 🥇

@roll i think we want to get stuff around bareNumber into the implementor guide.