Unidentified subject!

[Richard Coleman <coleman@math.gatech.edu>]

I'm just passing this along.

rc

------- Forwarded Message

From: Andrej Borsenkow <borsenkow.msk@sni.de>
Reply-To: borsenkow.msk@sni.de
To: zsh-announce@math.gatech.edu
Subject: Treatment of LANG

On Wed, 31 Jul 1996, Zoltan Hidvegi wrote:

> Hopefully this will be the last pre-release before zsh-3.0.  If you think
> that that an essential patch is still missing or there is a serious bug
> which should be fixed immediately, do not hesitate to mail it to
> zsh-workers@math.gatech.edu.  Do not mail bugreports and fixes directly to
> me.
>

Well, I would like to use the chance ;)

I consider current handling of LANG to be ehhh ... overkill. It cannot
be assumed, that LANG is the only env variable, which defines current
locale settings. It is so in our case (SINIX); I presume it is actually so
on some other systems as well. It can also pass unnoticed, as long as
people are content with uniform locale; in our case (Russian) it is not
always so - I have to set LC_CTYPE and LC_COLLATE to Russian of course,
but there are many arguments against setting other LC_* as well (at least 
as default).

So, currently zsh just behaves differently as any other program in the
system. I hardly consider it a feature. Acceptable solution would be
either to add other LC_* (including LC_ALL) as well, or just to not treat
LANG in special way.  It would make it to behave just as any other
program;  if you need to change locale, well, start new shell. 

I really fail to see the need to set LANG explicitly. For all I can tell,
setlocale(LC_ALL, "") at the start is enough; if you really need to set
*all* categories, why not use LC_ALL? It is what it was designed for. 

Really hope to hear, where and why I am wrong.

greetings

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Andrej Borsenkow 		Fax:   +7 (095) 252 01 05
SNI ITS Moscow			Tel:   +7 (095) 252 13 88

NERV:  borsenkow.msk		E-Mail: borsenkow.msk@sni.de
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