Re: How to set UTF-8 as default

[Rich Felker <dalias@libc.org>]

On Thu, Jun 02, 2016 at 01:05:40PM +0200, Remko Tronçon wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> When I call `nl_langinfo`, it returns "ASCII" by default. I can call
> `setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "C.UTF-8")` to make it return "UTF-8", but I was
> wondering if there was a way through environment variables to make C.UTF-8
> be the default.

Just call setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). This is the only way a correct
program should ever use setlocale. Specifying the locale name yourself
is not portable and generally contrary to the user's intent and
expectations. Passing "" requests the "default" locale, which is
implementation-defined by C. POSIX defines it in terms of the LC_* and
LANG environment variables if they are set, and an
implementation-defined default otherwise. musl's
implementation-defined default is C.UTF-8, so everythin works fine
even if no env vars are set.

> I tried setting LC_CTYPE and LC_ALL to C.UTF-8, but this doesn't seem to
> get picked up by `nl_langinfo` (or by `setlocale(LC_CTYPE, NULL)`).

NULL is not the same thing as "". Passing NULL as the second argument
to setlocale simply queries the current locale name. It does not setup
the locale.

Rich