[Python-bugs-list] [ python-Bugs-813449 ] locale.getdefaultlocale doesnt handle all locales gracefully

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Bugs item #813449, was opened at 2003-09-27 10:54
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by loewis
You can respond by visiting: 
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=105470&aid=813449&group_id=5470

Category: Extension Modules
Group: Python 2.3
Status: Open
Resolution: None
Priority: 5
Submitted By: Matthias Klose (doko)
Assigned to: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody)
Summary: locale.getdefaultlocale doesnt handle all locales gracefully

Initial Comment:
[forwarded from http://bugs.debian.org/185776]



$ LC_ALL=en_ZA python

Python 2.3.1 (#2, Sep 24 2003, 11:39:14) 

[GCC 3.3.2 20030908 (Debian prerelease)] on linux2

Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for

more information.

>>> import locale

>>> locale.getdefaultlocale()

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?

  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/locale.py", line 346, in

getdefaultlocale

    return _parse_localename(localename)

  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/locale.py", line 280, in

_parse_localename

    raise ValueError, 'unknown locale: %s' % localename

ValueError: unknown locale: en_ZA



Note that locale.getlocale correctly returns (None, None)



locale.getdefaultlocale() calls _parse_localename,

which throws a ValueError if normalize e.g. does not

return an encoding.



If this behaviour in python is "as it should be",

locale.getdefaultlocale should document it as such, to

make it clear to apps using getdefaultlocale that they

*must indeed* handle such an exception gracefully. (In

this case, it could probably be a "normal" bug, then

the "important" bug belongs with apt-listchanges.)



The problem might be (depending on "specifications")

either getlocale returning ValueError in the "unknown"

case, or it could be because locale_alias does not

contain an entry for en_ZA...



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>Comment By: Martin v. Löwis (loewis)
Date: 2003-10-04 10:06

Message:
Logged In: YES 
user_id=21627

This is a known limitation: getdefaultlocale should not be

used in new code.



If the intention is to compute the locale's encoding,

locale.getpreferredencoding should be used instead.

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