The behavor of printing out libc message catalog without calling setlocale()

[Ulrich Drepper]

GOTO Masanori <gotom@debian.or.jp> writes:

> What standard is it described?

No standard describes gettext.  I've written gettext with some friends
of mine.

> If calling setlocale() is needed anytime when we set locale-related 
> env variables, we must write setlocale() into hello.c ?! 

Yes.

> # Why don't you have setlocale(LC_ALL,"") in crt0.o? :-)

Because this would violate existing standards.

> If we set the locale-related variables but a program does not 
> call setlocale(), it should work as same as LC_ALL=C. Unix98 said that:
> 
>   For C-language programs, the POSIX locale is the default locale
>   when the setlocale() function is not called. 

Yes.  That's what we do.

> I set only LANGUAGE=ja_JP.eucJP, the sample 1 and 2 program
> which is written in my previous mail fail to print out Japanese
> messages everytime (print out not "Success" or Japanese libc's
> message catalog but "????").

That is because you haven't set the LC_CTYPE category and therefore
the program does not know why character set you use.  It uses the C
locale character set which is ASCII.

Basically, setlocale() must always be called.

> A program which does not call setlocale() should not print out
> any libc's translated message.

Unless you use LANGUAGE.

> Current glibc write out translated messages whenever we do not
> call setlocale(). It is not appropriate.

I don't agree.  This is the behavior we implemented a long time ago
(at a time when the glibc team consisted of two people).  If you don't
want to have translations in this case don't use LANGUAGE.  Use LC_ALL
or LANG.

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