Hacker News Reader

And then combine them into lakh crore (1,00,000,00,00,000 -> 12)

Really the worst system of the 3.

1 lakh crore is written as 10,00,00,00,00,000. The grouping is perfectly consistent.

Is it? If 1 lakh is 1,00,000 and 1 crore is 1,00,00,000, wouldn't the consistent grouping for 1 lakh crore be 1,00,000,00,00,000? How do you get to 10,00,00,00,00,000 by applying the same rules that apply to lakh and crore?

The consistency is "three digits in the first group and two in all others".

But now the written form of the number is completely disconnected from the spoken form. That means you have to write out the whole number first, and then go back through and add separators in random locations.

It's a rule that will tell you how to write "any number" equally, but it makes all the numbers inconsistent with each other.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com