On Sun, 13 Aug 2006, Bob Proulx wrote:
There are a couple of issues with trying to describe the locale variables. One is that if a user already has LC_ALL set to something then setting just LC_COLLATE has no effect. That is one of the reasons the coreutils info documentation says to set LC_ALL. If the user does exactly as stated then it will work as stated. A second problem is that LC_COLLATE may be incompatible with the current LC_CTYPE setting. Again by saying to set LC_ALL that issue is avoided. Having a partially incorrect or incomplete description confuses people worse than one that is too heavy handed.
I hadn't appreciated these subtleties. In that case, I suggest something like this: retain the LC_ALL recommendation for the reasons given above, but add a note that says something like:
"While this will work, the true situation is more complex. See <relevant documentation> for more details."
With a modest amount of searching, I've not managed to find a better value of <relevant documentation> than the POSIX standard, which end users ought not to have to read; but the bash info documentation, for example, is insufficiently detailed (indeed, it falls into the same trap by recommending at one point setting either LC_ALL or LC_COLLATE). Perhaps I should file a bug there too...
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