[Python-Dev] LC_NUMERIC and C libraries

[Martin v. Löwis]

Christian Reis <kiko@async.com.br> writes:

> I've spoken briefly to Guido about this, and he's suggested python-dev
> as the place to ask. I'd really like to know how bad "too much would
> break" is, and if anybody contemplates a way to fix it [*]. I'd volunteer to
> work on the change, of course. 

I added the special-casing of LC_NUMERIC when I found Python can't
parse floating point literals in Python source code anymore, in such a
locale (de_DE uses the same convention). This is triggered by atof(3)
changing its meaning, inside compile.c:parsenumber.

If that was fixed, it would still be the case that the float() and
str() builtins would change their meaning, with potential breakage to
applications and the standard library. I can't give examples for such
breakage myself right now - you might just want to run the test suite
and see what breaks.

However, it probably would be better if float() and str() continued to
be locale-inaware.

If you can come up with a change that really allows setting
LC_NUMERIC, works on all platforms, has the above properties (parsing,
float, and str don't change), and passes the test suite, I'm all in
favour of adding it to 2.4.

Regards,
Martin