Undocumented handling of thousands separator for floats and differences wrt Decimal

Bug report

Bug description:

In docs we have:

The ',' option signals the use of a comma for a thousands separator for floating-point presentation types and for integer presentation type 'd'. For other presentation types, this option is an error. For a locale aware separator, use the 'n' integer presentation type instead.

The '_' option signals the use of an underscore for a thousands separator for floating-point presentation types and for integer presentation type 'd'. For integer presentation types 'b', 'o', 'x', and 'X', underscores will be inserted every 4 digits. For other presentation types, specifying this option is an error.

But this doesn't specify how separators are inserted for customized alignment, consider:

>>> format(0.0, '>020_f')
'0000000000000.000000'
>>> format(0.0, '<020_f')
'0.000000000000000000'
>>> format(0.0, '=020_f')
'0_000_000_000.000000'
>>> format(0.0, '^020_f')
'0000000.000000000000'

Probably it's obvious, that separators might be inserted only in case of 0-padding and = alignment, though maybe this should be mentioned explicitly.

Note also that neither from above supported by Decimal/Fraction, e.g.:

>>> format(Decimal(0.0), '=020_f')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<python-input-13>", line 1, in <module>
    format(Decimal(0.0), '=020_f')
    ~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
ValueError: invalid format string
>>> format(Fraction(0.0), '=020_f')
'            0.000000'
>>> format(float(Fraction(0.0)), '=020_f')
'0_000_000_000.000000'

BTW, the rationale for Fraction's behavior (see https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/100161) is "no special-casing of the particular '0=' fill-character/alignment combination", which is rather weak, IMO.

Either this should be fixed (preferred) or documented.

CPython versions tested on:

CPython main branch

Operating systems tested on:

No response

Linked PRs

• gh-131030
• gh-131067
• gh-132155
• gh-136241
• gh-136242
• gh-136649

Start by reading the format specification mini-language documentation and reproducing the float, Decimal, and Fraction examples in the issue. Review the linked PRs to understand the work already underway. Done means resolving the separator and alignment behavior consistently or documenting the observed rules.