Re: A non TZ related question ...

[Paul Eggert]

Robert Elz wrote:
> That's when the suggestion was made that we should attempt to find
> out what other systems do.   Most seem to be like linux (was?) and
> only allow '.' (posix actually mandates that for printf

POSIX used to require that for printf, but now it requires the opposite, i.e., 
POSIX requires printf floating-point operands to be parsed as if by strtod in 
the current locale. Although this change was apparently made a while ago, I 
hadn't noticed until now. (POSIX allows programs to accept forms other than what 
strtod would accept, as extensions, an the escape hatch that my recent change 
exploits.)

> I fixed that by making sleep parse the arg in the user's locale first,
> and if that fails, using the C locale (if both fail, it is an error.)

Exactly what I independently did with GNU 'sleep' yesterday. This approach seems 
better than the alternatives.

> Does linux have any utility that would convert numeric
> args from one LC_NUMERIC locale to another?

Nothing comes to mind. GNU 'numfmt' would be a good place for that sort of 
thing.

> double          strtod_l(const char * __restrict, char ** __restrict, locale_t);

glibc already has strtod_l. We haven't found a use for it in GNU utilities, 
other than as a subroutine of c_strtod. I can see where it might be useful for 
multilingual and/or multithreaded applications, but so far that hasn't come up.