> >This was some years ago, it might be fixed by now, but it demonstrates > >how the locale insanity makes life so much more fun. > > It likely is fixed by now. If not, I'd like to have a sample program and > data and locale name to test under. And the truth is, even if it doesn't work, > I can blame the library routines and locale and not my code. :-)
Yes, it is likely fixed now, and it was very likely a bug in the libraries rather than awk, but illustrates the kinds of problems locales create. And I can tell you, in a production environment it can be a pain when who knows what tool who knows where in your whole system starts to misbehave because it is not happy with your locale. I also find most sad how in the name of 'localization' the output of many tools (specially error messages) has become unpredictable. It makes providing support most fun when you ask people "can you copy paste the output you get when you run this", and they answer with a bunch of stuff Aramaic. If you use unix, you are supposed to understand English, period. (Or what is next? will they have a set of 'magic symlinks' that links '/bin/gato' to '/bin/cat' if your locale is in Spanish?) And now that you mention Gettext, if only I could get back all the time I wasted trying to compile some stupid program (that should never have been 'localized' in the first place) which is somehow unhappy about the gettext version I have (or the other way around)... uriel P.S.: Oh, and people who insist in using encodings other than UTF-8 should be locked up in padded cells (without access to computers and ideally even without electricity, unless it is to help them electrocute themselves) for the good of mankind.
