Bug#219765: Languagechooser 1.03 dies on mipsel

[kraai@lafn.org]

Karsten Merker wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 10, 2003 at 07:02:30PM -0800, Matt Kraai wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 10, 2003 at 10:26:20PM +0100, Karsten Merker wrote:
> > > On Sat, Nov 08, 2003 at 09:38:09PM +0000, Alastair McKinstry wrote:
> > > 
> > > > > if echo $LANG $LC_CTYPE | grep -q UTF-8 ; then
> > > > >   db_set debconf/language en
> > > > > else
> > > > >   db_set debconf/language C
> > > > > fi
> > > > 
> > > > Hi,
> > > > 
> > > > The code actually goes:
> > > > echo $LANG $LC_CTYPE | grep -q UTF-8
> > > > if [ $? ] ; then
> > > > ...
> > > 
> > > That was the original case, which also did not work. The code I cited
> > > above is the current state in cvs.
> > > 
> > > > if this fails, try the variant
> > > > if `echo $LANG $LC_CTYPE | grep -q UTF-8 ` ; then
> > 
> > What are the backticks for?
> 
> They have no "real" function, in fact they are logically "wrong" here,
> but they cause the shell to take an additional redirection which does
> not trigger the shell crash that happens without them.
> 
> This contruction works only "by accident" because grep is called with
> the -q option, so that the backticks end up in delivering an empty
> string. Nonetheless the grep gets evaluated and the if executes the
> following code based on the returncode of the grep.
> 
> In the meantime I have tried making this a "legal" contruct that also
> does not trigger the crash. If one executes the "echo $LANG $LC_CTYPE |
> grep -q UTF-8" in a subshell, it also does not crash, so the proper
> solution would probably be to write
> 
> if (echo $LANG $LC_CTYPE | grep -q UTF-8 ) ; then
> 
> This works for me without crashing, and as the return code is passed
> back from the subshell, the code does what it is supposed to do, i.e.
> set debconf/language to "en" in case of an UTF-8 locale and to "C"
> otherwise.
> 
> If nobody objects, I will check this into the CVS.
> 
> We still have to look into the other problem I have mentioned (d-i
> hanging after selecting another language than US-English), though.

Thanks for the explanation.

Would you please file a bug against the shell and add a comment referencing it
and indicating that the workaround should be removed once the bug is fixed?

-- 
Matt


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