Re: CVS commit: src/bin/sleep

[Valery Ushakov <uwe%stderr.spb.ru@localhost>]

On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 10:43:10 +0700, Robert Elz wrote:

>     Date:        Thu, 24 Jan 2019 16:18:49 +0100
>     From:        Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg%bec.de@localhost>
>     Message-ID:  <20190124151849.GA10743%britannica.bec.de@localhost>
> 
>   | This is overcomplicated and fragile, IMO. Can we just go back to the old
>   | code and switch the strtod to strtod_l with LC_C_LOCALE? That solves the
>   | input problem.
> 
> We could certainly do that, but while it is a little complicated, I do not
> really think it is fragile.  Using a locale specific decimal radix in a
> script is fragile - but the only way to avoid that is either to effectively
> give up on non-C locales entirely for scripts, or drop all support for
> fractional numbers as args to any command.
> 
> Note: the arg to "sleep" might come as ...
> 	echo -n "How many seconds do you want to sleep? "
> 	read secs
> 	sleep "${secs}"
> (with some error checking).
> 
> I have no idea why sleep() was made to parse its arg in a locale
> specific way, but that was done long long ago, and was (according
> to the comments) done quite deliberately.
> 
> I think changing that decison (rather than just avoiding the problem,
> as the current "fix" does) needs more discussion than a few comments
> on the source-changes-d list.

As someone who actually have to ecnoutner locales in daily life and
not just think about them sitting in an ivory tower I don't understand
why do we even have this argument. Locale-specific argument to sleep
is pure madness, period (no pun intended).

-uwe