From: Hans de Graaff <redmine@...>
Date: 2009-05-28T20:15:22+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:23587] [Bug #1528] setlocale is not initialized causing problems when using iconv

Issue #1528 has been updated by Hans de Graaff.


If I am reading the setlocale man page correctly, then setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "") does not change the locale environment variables at all. Instead it uses the environment variables such as LC_ALL and its specializations to initialize the locale of the application. Quoting from the man page: " If  locale  is "", each part of the locale that should be modified is set according to the environment  variables.".

The man page also mentions:

       On startup of the main program, the portable "C" locale is selected as default.   A
       program may be made portable to all locales by calling:

           setlocale(LC_ALL, "");

       after  program  initialization,  by  using the values returned from a localeconv(3)
       call for locale-dependent information, by using the multi-byte and  wide  character
       functions  for  text  processing  if  MB_CUR_MAX  >  1,  and  by  using strcoll(3),
       wcscoll(3) or strxfrm(3), wcsxfrm(3) to compare strings.

So it seems to me that without an explicit setlocale call it will be a matter of luck as to whether any of the other methods are actually called. Setting the locale information for the application to that of the environment consistenly seems like a good thing to have.
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http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/1528

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