From: Xavier Leroy <xavier.leroy@inria.fr>
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] string_of_float -> float_of_string locale dependency bug
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 17:58:22 +0200

> > Camomile needs to set LC_ALL to acquire LC_NUMERIC value.  Camomile
> > does not use LC_NUMERIC value currently, but it provides API to
> > getting all LC_* values for the user.
> 
> Fine.  So what about restoring LC_NUMERIC after getting its value, like you
> helpfully suggest that the Caml run-time system does?

Because I did not aware that this causes a problem.  I will do
something to fix this problem.

> > > The C library API for internationalization is largely broken, and as
> > > you can see there is nothing we can do to work around the fact that
> > > the current locale is a global variable for the whole program.
> > 
> > You can temporally save the current LC_NUMERIC value, change its value
> > to C, and restore the value after the conversion.  What is a problem?
> 
> Speed.  setlocale() is quite expensive, and string <-> float
> conversions can be extremely frequent.

Then, how about wrapping the entire ocaml-runtime by this "locale-free
zone"?  C primitives would be executed in "C" locale, but let them
have an access to the saved locale and temporarily revert back to the
original locale.

--
Yamagata Yoriyuki

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