Characters in a locale data file can in general appear quoted (') or not. For example:
thousands_sep = , thousands_sep = ','
Both of the above statements set thousands_sep to a comma. Quotes might be necessary to disambiguate the intended character from ordinary whitespace. For example, to set the thousands_sep to a space character, quotes must be used:
thousands_sep = ' '
The whitespace appearing before and after the equal sign is not necessary and insignificant.