On Tue, 2002-06-11 at 20:33, Ian D. Stewart wrote: > Different parts of the world have slightly different conventions for > representing for various types of data. As an example, take the date > 04/01/2002. To a brit, this is January 4th, 2002. To an american, it > is April 1st, 2002. For me that would be 2002-04-01 or better yet: Fyrsti apríl árið tvöþúsund og tvö eftir Krists burð! > The POSIX standard has codified all these > different conventions into something referred to as a 'locale'. It > covers things like date/time display, collation, capitalization, etc. > > The POSIX standard also provides a default locale, referred to as the > 'C locale'. It is very similiar to en_US, but with some important > differences. For example, when sorting in the EN_us locale, values are > sorted alphebetically, so that a word beginning with 'A' precedes a > word beginning with 'Z', regardless of case. In the C locale, Zed > precedes aleph because the character 'Z' precedes 'a' in the ASCII > encoding (this is sometimes referred to as 'ascii-betical order'). > > As a matter of good programming practice (following the principal of > least astonishment), if a locale is specified, that locale should be > used. If no locale is specified, or if the specified locale is not > supported by the C library (see man 3 setlocale), then the program > should fallback to the C locale. Apparently, in the case of the > application that triggered this thread, that last step wasn't followed. > > So, clear as mud? ;) > > > Blessa, > Ian Whooa Ian, that was cool! Heill þér Ásatrúi. Bless, Helgi Örn PS: Hope you can see the Icelandic symbols...:) -- ~~~~~ This message is digitally signed-GPG key at: ~~~~ ~ <http://www.sacred-eagle.com/gnupg_public_key.html> ~
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