On Sat, Jan 26, 2019 at 12:28:08PM +0100, Kamil Rytarowski wrote: > This is where I disagree. In my opinion (of a native user of ",") - > parsing locale specific input for such programs doesn't make sense. > > Locale specific format is in my opinion appropriate only for programs > that process text for printing (like man(1) or groff(1)).
So here's the thing: there's an underlying design problem here that nobody (not us, not POSIX, and certainly not anyone in the Linux world) has really worked out a solution to, and that is: The Unix shell environment is about processing text, and, largely, processing text in arbitrary ad hoc ways. It fundamentally relies on being able to treat the user-facing output of arbitrary programs as machine-readable input. This puts the goal of customizing user-facing output to accomodate the user in direct conflict with the goal of making the shell environment work as intended. One 'solution' is to discourage ordinary users from learning the shell environment ("...for the console is dark, and full of terrors") so that it can be arbitrarily broken (via ill-considered locale behavior and other things) without repercussions. That seems to be the Linux world's approach. That won't work for NetBSD, if only because there are too many oldtimers here. Another 'solution' is to create a separate but equal set of additional tools for use when the output needs to be predictable. This seems to be what POSIX favors, but it's not right either: it compromises the design, since the point, or part of the point, has always been that the shell allows you to paste together the same things that you use directly. Also it multiplies entities needlessly. Some other approach is needed. It's not particularly clear what. -- David A. Holland dholl...@netbsd.org