Pádraig Brady wrote:
> Jim Meyering wrote:
>> The only advantage is that my patch uses the existing framework,
>> rather than adding special case code in ls.c proper.
>> Whether that is worth the apparent complexity...
>>
>> If you prefer his patch and want to adjust it and
>> handle the rest, I have no objection.
>
> Yes it's debatable.
> I'll take a closer look at both
> and send an updated one if I think
> the special case in ls.c more appropriate.
Thinking more about this I'm wondering about special casing en_* at all.
The result of this patch is that for most people the usual timestamp
format changes from 1 (ISO) to 3 fields (POSIX).
So the first minor issue I have is that ISO has been the usual
format for 4 years at least, so I suspect that this might trigger
bugs in scripts parsing ls output. I do prefer the traditional
POSIX specified format myself and I'm surprised that no one
reported this until now. In summary I'm about 60:40 for making
the change, and if we do I'll add appropriate text to NEWS.
The other question I have is why do we assume ISO anyway when a
format translation it not available? For example we've no translations
for en_PH or tl_PH and so at the moment they'll get ISO format
even though Tagalog month abbreviations are available:
$ LANG=tl_PH locale abmon
Ene;Peb;Mar;Abr;May;Hun;Hul;Ago;Sep;Okt;Nob;Dis
Now if we do apply the special casing for en_* then you'll have
different date formats for en_PH and tl_PH. Really the date
format is associated with the country rather than the language.
(Note I don't think we can determine whether abmon is specific
to the locale or whether it's just the "C" default).
So I think if we accept the first point above that we would change the
default format to POSIX for most people I think we should just remove the
code defaulting to ISO if a translation is not available ?
I.E. revert part of 6837183d as follows:
diff --git a/src/ls.c b/src/ls.c
index 1bb6873..4531b94 100644
--- a/src/ls.c
+++ b/src/ls.c
@@ -2014,7 +2014,6 @@ decode_switches (int argc, char **argv)
break;
case long_iso_time_style:
- case_long_iso_time_style:
long_time_format[0] = long_time_format[1] = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M";
break;
@@ -2030,13 +2029,8 @@ decode_switches (int argc, char **argv)
formats. If not, fall back on long-iso format. */
int i;
for (i = 0; i < 2; i++)
- {
- char const *locale_format =
- dcgettext (NULL, long_time_format[i], LC_TIME);
- if (locale_format == long_time_format[i])
- goto case_long_iso_time_style;
- long_time_format[i] = locale_format;
- }
+ long_time_format[i] =
+ dcgettext (NULL, long_time_format[i], LC_TIME);
}
}
/* Note we leave %5b etc. alone so user widths/flags are honored. */
