Re: [PATCH] improve locale handling in m4/wcwidth.m4

[Bruno Haible]

Hello,

> the attached patch solves two problems with the current version of  
> m4/wcwidth.m4 (serial 14). However, those two problems are so closely  
> related that I chose to attack them in one patch.

On which platform did you encounter a wcwidth that does not work? In
doc/posix-functions/wcwidth.texi we list known problems on MacOS X.
What's your platform?

> The first problem arises if the setlocale command fails (returning NULL).  
> Then the actual test is not executed and the main function returns 0. This  
> value indicates properly working wcwidth with UTF-8 locale. However, the  
> test did not take place, as setlocale failed. ... I  
> sanitized the C programs main return value if setlocale failed.

There is a hidden assumption that a system either has many UTF-8 locales,
then the test will find the French one, or none at all - and in that case it
does not matter how wcwidth behaves with advanced Unicode characters.

> The first problem is the hard-coded locale name "fr_FR.UTF-8". I'd suppose  
> using $LOCALE_FR_UTF8 from gt_LOCALE_FR_UTF8 is a saner choice.

In general you're right, but for MacOS X the string "fr_FR.UTF-8" is sufficient.

Also, if we're going to fix m4/wcwidth.m4, it would be nice to know your name,
for the ChangeLog entry and such. Are you Mario Aistleitner?

Bruno