Re: problem with `LANG=C.utf8` and `LANGUAGE`

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Werner,

> In the gettext info manual there is the following sentence:
> 
> > The variable `LANGUAGE` is ignored if the locale is set to ‘C’.
> 
> Unfortunately, it fails for `C.utf8`:
> 
> ```
> > LANG=C LANGUAGE=fr ls --help
> Usage: ls [OPTION]... [FILE]...
> List information about the FILEs (the current directory by default).
> Sort entries alphabetically if none of -cftuvSUX nor --sort is specified.
> ...
> 
> > LANG=C.utf8 LANGUAGE=fr ls --help
> Utilisation : ls [OPTION]... [FICHIER]...
> Afficher des renseignements sur les FICHIERs (du répertoire actuel par 
> défaut).
> Trier les entrées alphabétiquement si aucune des options -cftuvSUX ou --sort
> ne sont utilisées.
> ...
> ```

Thanks for the report. I assume your report is about a glibc system;
therefore I have reproduced it with glibc and reported a glibc bug:
https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=29777

For future bug reports, please note that it is better to use LC_ALL
instead of LANG, because LANG can be overridden by LC_* variables, as
documented in
https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Locale-Environment-Variables.html

> My suggestion is to modify the gettext behaviour: The variable
> `LANGUAGE` should be ignored if the locale is set to 'C', irrespective
> of the selected encoding.

I will do that if the bug gets fixed on the glibc side (as I would expect).

Thanks for the (important) report!

Bruno