Proposing to call setlocale( LC_ALL, "C" ) in msSetup()

[Frank Warmerdam]

Umberto Nicoletti wrote:
> Hi,
> I think the solution is worse than the problem. While it should pose
> no problem for mapserver cgi I can easily imagine it wreaking the
> havoc in Java mapscript and even C# mapscript.

Umberto,

Can you explain what sort of havoc this may wreak on Java mapscript?

I can certainly forsee problems if mapscript is loaded into apache,
in that our setlocale() action may affect all other activity using
the c runtime in Apache.  Is that the sort of issue you are concerned
about?

> I am for rewriting the code to be locale sensitive and if possible
> will try to help, but cannot make promises as I am on a really tight
> schedule to fix another localization bug with Java mapscript
> (http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=1753).

Well, none of us can make binding promises, but without a clear
indication of the issues and options you see, I would end up falling
back on my own experience within GDAL.

There we have pursued a two part strategy.

1) Temporarily push the C numeric locale when within GDAL.  However calling
setlocale() is relatively expensive, so we can't afford to do it all the time.
So instead we do it in key calls (like GDALOpen()) and leave it to the
application code to enforce it more generally if needed.

2) We are working on writing locale-free versions of functions like atof(),
and sprintf() that we can try to use widely to give "C locale" parsing and
formatting regardless of the locale set for the purposes of the user.  This
has proven to be fraught with peril before have even gotten to the point of
trying to use these functions!

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGF, http://osgeo.org