Re: CVS commit: src/bin/sleep

[Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>]

    Date:        Fri, 25 Jan 2019 12:38:00 +0100
    From:        Kamil Rytarowski <n54%gmx.com@localhost>
    Message-ID:  <9790a289-8b3e-e57a-e4d8-c021aa7b1b38%gmx.com@localhost>

  | I think it's better to keep an uniform way of handling separator in
  | basic command line tools and restrict locales to translations only.

Once again, if this is to change, it needs to be discussed and
agreed on an appropriate list, in messages that are obvious enough
that anyone interested is likely to read them.

As my (currently uncommited) code is, making the change would
be trivial - just deleting two lines and changing the indentation on
the one that follows (and updating a few comments.)   (Plus one of
the new ATF tests would need changing.)

Or, there could be an option, which could be used in cases where
the arg has come from user input, rather than being coded into a
script (the program being run cannot tell from where its command
line args originate - it would need to be told) and only do locale
specific parsing when expressly told to do so (in which case when
so instructed it would only allow the correct locale specific value).
That would not be much harder (and very little extra code - though
it would need documenting.)

  | My native locale uses ',' for separator...

Yes, most of Europe does I believe.   Someone (from Europe) once
tried telling me that it was "everywhere" except English speaking
countries.    But that was a very Euro-centric viewpoint (only Europe
(plus North America) counted as part of "everywhere") and is
certainly not correct in general.

It isn't really relevant, but it is worth pointing out, that technically
in English the radix char is not '.' either, that's just what we use
in computing and typing (which these days means almost everywhere).
The actual character is slightly bigger than a period, and positioned
about half way up the height of a normal lower case character (the
digits should have both ascenders and descenders, and not all be
equal height ... but that is even less common these days than a
correctly implemented decimal point - which would appear about
half way up the loop in a 6 or 9, which should both have their
loops at the same horizontal position.)

kre