setting a default LANG option for unicode, ash shell - patch

[Richard Moore]

Hi Ralf,

I was just posting it for reference really, I wasn't suggesting it 
should be included per se.

I find the mailing list archive is a good knowledge base to find 
problems/solutions other people have encountered.

I appreciate it is my ignorance, but it seems counter intuitive for a 
novice that unicode support is enabled in BB but it actually doesn't 
work without LANG being set.

Cheers,
Rich

On 12/06/14 11:20, Ralf Friedl wrote:
> Richard Moore wrote:
>> I am just posting this in case it helps someone else out.
>>
>> I had trouble creating a small live boot system to run an ncurses 
>> program requiring unicode support, running straight from rcS.
>> Without the LANG env set it didn't display any unicode. Exporting 
>> LANG in rcS didnt have an effect.
>> I had partial success starting it via a new shell from rcS and 
>> exporting it the variable but ultimately if the program was exited 
>> and then restarted, the env was gone.
>>
>> This little patch sets a default utf8 LANG option for the ash shell 
>> so you don't need to try and export it, it will just work from the 
>> get go. Hope it is of some use to someone.
> This patch may be useful to you, and you could probably get the same 
> effect by writing it into some configuration file, but in general it 
> is just a bad idea.
>
> Busybox or ash should not assume a specific value for LANG, and 
> certainly it should not set a value for LANG. It should not overwrite 
> a value that is already present in the environment, and it also should 
> not set a value if LANG was not set. In short, it should not modify 
> LANG at all.