locale.getpreferredencoding fails on AIX

[nnorwitz]

BPO	678259
Nosy	@loewis

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = 'https://github.com/loewis'
closed_at = <Date 2003-03-30.15:57:59.000>
created_at = <Date 2003-01-31.18:01:33.000>
labels = ['extension-modules']
title = 'locale.getpreferredencoding fails on AIX'
updated_at = <Date 2003-03-30.15:57:59.000>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/nnorwitz'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2003-03-30.15:57:59.000>
actor = 'loewis'
assignee = 'loewis'
closed = True
closed_date = None
closer = None
components = ['Extension Modules']
creation = <Date 2003-01-31.18:01:33.000>
creator = 'nnorwitz'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 678259
keywords = []
message_count = 6.0
messages = ['14336', '14337', '14338', '14339', '14340', '14341']
nosy_count = 2.0
nosy_names = ['loewis', 'nnorwitz']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'fixed'
stage = None
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = None
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue678259'
versions = []

[nnorwitz]

The problem is setting LC_CTYPE to an empty string:

>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, '')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "/home/neal/python/dist/aix/Lib/locale.py", line 
381, in setlocale
    return _setlocale(category, locale)
locale.Error: locale setting not supported

Putting a try/except around the setlocale call in
getpreferredencoding allows the test to pass. I don't
know if this is correct.

[loewis]

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What are the relevant environment settings? According to

http://nscp.upenn.edu/aix4.3html/libs/basetrf2/setlocale.htm

specifying "" as the second argument of setlocale is
supported, and means the same thing as it does on all other
systems: take locale settings from the user preferences.

[nnorwitz]

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The problem was that the setlocale in Lib/locale.py was
being used, not from Modules/_localemodule.c. In the python
version, it does not allow an empty string. Seems like this
should be changed, do you agree?

[loewis]

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I don't understand. In the traceback, it says that
_setlocale is invoked, which is the function from
_localemodule. Since the locale argument is still an empty
string, it still seems to be a flaw in the AIX
implementation, or else the user has environment settings
which are not supported by AIX.

[nnorwitz]

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The traceback from the original report was not the same as
my last comment. The original problem seems to be gone. I
don't know what changed, but the localemodule builds and
tests correctly. However, before getting the module to
build, I was using the python version. The python version
of setlocale() doesn't support setting a value to an empty
string. Based on your first comment, it seems the python
version (line 72 of locale.py) should allow the value to be
either '' or 'C'.

[loewis]

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I guess the empty string should be accepted (although this
is debatable: it won't honor the user preferences if the
user had some).

Fixed in locale.py 1.25.