[Bug 1898902] Re: (doc?) locale-gen disagrees with locale(5)

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On 2020-10-07T17:19:10+00:00 Hugo van der Sanden wrote:

In the section for LC_NUMERIC, locale(5) says:

  decimal_point
    followed by the string that will be used as the decimal delim-
    iter when formatting numeric quantities.

.. without constraint on what the string may include. It appears this is
actually constrained by processors to be a single character, as at
https://code.woboq.org/userspace/glibc/locale/programs/ld-
numeric.c.html#229

It is not clear if that is part of the spec: if so, I think this should
be made explicit in the man page; if not, it is probably still worth
noting that some applications (such as localedef) require it.

I have not checked, but it seems likely that thousands_sep has the same
constraint, and would need similar treatment.

Initially reported for Ubuntu at
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/glibc/+bug/1898902, they
recommended I re-post upstream.

Reply at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/glibc/+bug/1898902/comments/2


** Changed in: glibc
       Status: Unknown => New

** Changed in: glibc
   Importance: Unknown => Medium

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1898902

Title:
  (doc?) locale-gen disagrees with locale(5)

Status in GLibC:
  New
Status in glibc package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  The LC_NUMERIC section of locale(5) includes:

         decimal_point
                followed by the string that will be used as the  decimal  delim-
                iter when formatting numeric quantities.

  .. without constraint on what the string may include. However locale-gen appears to reject any attempt to define decimal_point to a string longer than one character, with the message:
    LC_NUMERIC: value for field `decimal_point' must be a single character
    [error] LC_NUMERIC: field `decimal_point' not defined

  If that constraint is intended, I think locale(5) should specify it.
  (There may be a similar issue for thousands_sep, I didn't test that.)

  Found on bionic with locales-2.27-3ubuntu1.2, I did not check other
  releases.

  Motivation: I wanted to define a longer decimal_point so as to test
  the robustness of an application's number formatting.

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