[PLUG] env LANG=C

[Wil Cooley]

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Carla Schroder wrote:

> OK, let's try a different approach- When using the command env LANG=C to
> run a program, for example
> 
> env LANG=C gnumeric
> 
> is it correct to say, this sets the locale for gnumeric as defined within
> gnumeric's own code? In order to override the system locale? That C = the
> default as coded in the app itself?

Well, yes and no, for certain meanings of "default".  For an 
internationalized application, there are no hard-coded "defaults" 
(otherwise, it wouldn't be flexible enough to make translations for).  
However, for a newly created application, C is typically the first 
"translation" done--there is, I think, a standard or at least informal 
convention that this locale always exist.

I've never done any actual development with i18n'd applications, so past 
that I can't tell you.  Of course, locales change things other than 
language text strings--it also controls the way numbers and dates are 
formatted in some standard C functions.
 
> Or am I like totally confused? Here are some reference docs I found:
> 
> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html
> http://www.ccd.bnl.gov/bcf/cluster/pgi/pgC++_lib/stdlibug/sta_9169.htm
> 
> I can firmly and confidently state that env is a bash command. By dang,
> got that much.

Yes and no :)  It is a command, but it's not a bash built-in command, like 
'test' or 'echo'.  It's also not necessary in your example above--'LANG=C 
gnumeric' would have worked just fine.  The only reason I can think of for 
prepending 'env' would be to make it portable to other shells--my example 
wouldn't work in csh but yours would.  But now I'm OT. 

Hm, maybe this from POSIX/The Single Unix Specification v2 will be 
enlightening (and then again, maybe not :):

  POSIX Locale
  All systems provide a POSIX locale, also known as the C locale. The   
  behaviour of standard utilities and functions in the POSIX locale is as if 
  the locale was defined via the localedef utility with input data from the   
  POSIX locale tables in Locale Definition .

  The tables in Locale Definition describe the characteristics and behaviour 
  of the POSIX locale for data consisting entirely of characters from the 
  portable character set and the control character set. For other 
  characters, the behaviour is unspecified. For C-language programs, the 
  POSIX locale is the default locale when the setlocale() function is not 
  called.

  The POSIX locale can be specified by assigning to the appropriate 
  environment variables the values C or POSIX.

  All implementations define a locale as the default locale, to be invoked 
  when no environment variables are set, or set to the empty string. This 
  default locale can be the POSIX locale or any other, 
  implementation-dependent locale. Some implementations may provide 
  facilities for local installation administrators to set the default 
  locale, customising it for each location. This specification set does not 
  require such a facility. 

If you don't want to go through the mess of getting a downloadable copy of 
SUSv2 from http://www.opengroup.org, you might also look at the glibc info 
pages.

Wil
- -- 
Wil Cooley                                 wcooley at nakedape.cc
Naked Ape Consulting                        http://nakedape.cc
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