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-L does nothing on C/POSIX locale #187

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-L does nothing on C/POSIX locale#187

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@zdimension
zdimension
opened on Sep 8, 2026

If the system locale is C or POSIX, then the -L flag does nothing.

On my machine, for example,

$ locale
LANG=C.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
$ locale -a
C
C.utf8
POSIX
fr_FR.utf8

$ bash start.sh -L fr
[starts in English]
$ bash start.sh -R -L it
[starts in English]

$ LANG=fr_FR.utf8 bash start.sh -R
[starts in French]
$ LANG=fr_FR.utf8 bash start.sh -R -L fr
[starts in Italian]

Maybe the docs should be updated to indicate setting the LANG env var (or LC_MESSAGESn or LC_ALL, ...) is required for it to work.

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  1. phyver commented on Sep 14, 2026

    @phyver
    phyver
    on Sep 14, 2026
    Owner

    AH...
    I never completely understood how all that really worked: the difference between setting LANG, LANGUAGE or LC_MESSAGES.

    The reason -L only uses LANGUAGE is because you don't need to give the full locale name, and this is much more beginners friendly. Also, it doesn't require any corresponding locale installed on the system. It doesn't work on all systems though. (The BSDs don't use LANGUAGE if I remember correctly.)
    That it doesn't work when the current locale is C or POSIX is new to me!

    I am trying to keep the README fairly minimal. (It could go in the faq, but this is badly out of date, and I doubt anyone is actually using it.)
    Also, I want gameshell to be as close as possible to the "real" system and at least for teaching, I'd try to make sure the default locale supports UTF8 (we are in 2026) and has the appropriate language.

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