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Variable length date strings in glibc locales?
- From: Marko Myllynen <myllynen at redhat dot com>
- To: Keld Simonsen <keld at keldix dot com>, "Carlos O'Donell" <carlos at redhat dot com>
- Cc: libc-locales at sourceware dot org, "mtk.manpages" <mtk dot manpages at gmail dot com>
- Date: Tue, 27 May 2014 09:58:56 +0300
- Subject: Variable length date strings in glibc locales?
- Authentication-results: sourceware.org; auth=none
- Reply-to: myllynen at redhat dot com
Hi,
in some languages dates are written without leading zeroes so that May 3
would be "3.5.". The same for time, 08:07:00 would be "8.07.00".
In glibc locales it would be possible to write dates and times in such
fashion but do we know how that would affect existing applications? Are
they expecting dates and times to be fixed length and would variable
length date strings cause formatting or layout issues? Looking at
existing locales, almost all of them use fixed length strings for
d_fmt/t_fmt/date_fmt/d_t_fmt.
Ideally of course it would be nice to change certain locales to use date
and time formats according to their cultural conventions and national
recommendations but if that would lead to wonky layout in applications
then it's probably better to be pragmatic and use fixed length dates.
I could add few words about this to our Locales wiki page if someone
happens to know what's the best approach here.
Thanks,
--
Marko Myllynen