Gettext and LC_MESSAGES

[Tomohiro KUBOTA <kubota@surfchem0.riken.go.jp>]

Hi,

I found a peculiar behavior of setlocale() and gettext.

At first, I wrote the following program to test setlocale().

-----------------------------------------
/* setlocale.c */
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <locale.h>

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
	char *loc;

	loc = setlocale(LC_ALL, "");
	if (!loc) printf("setlocale(LC_ALL) fails.\n");
	else printf("LC_ALL = %s\n", loc);

	loc = setlocale(LC_MESSAGES, "");
	if (!loc) printf("setlocale(LC_MESSAGES) fails.\n");
	else printf("LC_MESSAGES = %s\n", loc);

	return 0;
}
-----------------------------------------


~$ LANG=C ./setlocale 
LC_ALL = C
LC_MESSAGES = C
~$ LANG=C ls foobar
ls: foobar: No such file or directory


~$ LANG=de_DE ./setlocale 
LC_ALL = de_DE
LC_MESSAGES = de_DE
~$ LANG=de_DE ls foobar
ls: foobar: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden


~$ LANG=de ./setlocale 
setlocale(LC_ALL) fails.
setlocale(LC_MESSAGES) fails.
~$ LANG=de ls foobar
ls: foobar: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden


The first and second examples work well.  However, the third example
shows that gettext does not obey LC_MESSAGES locale.  

There should be two discussions: (1) Why setlocale(LC_MESSAGES, "de")
fails?  Should we improve locale database to have "de" locale?
(2) Why German message is displayed while setlocale() fails?  Is this
a bug of gettext or glibc?

Or, do I have a wrong idea that gettext should obey LC_MESSAGES...?


Note: Of course "de" is one example.  This is same for other languages.


ii  gettext        0.10.35-14     GNU Internationalization utilities
ii  gettext-base   0.10.35-14     GNU Internationalization utilities for the b
ii  libc6          2.1.3-10       GNU C Library: Shared libraries and Timezone
ii  libc6-dev      2.1.3-10       GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
ii  locales        2.1.3-10       GNU C Library: National Language (locale) da

---
Tomohiro KUBOTA <kubota@debian.or.jp>
http://surfchem0.riken.go.jp/~kubota/