nl_langinfo returning null?

[Charles Wilson <cygwin at cwilson dot fastmail dot fm>]

I've noticed that bsdtar.exe has been coredumping occasionally. I've
tracked it down to a behavioral change in recent cygwin DLLs.  This line
in bsdtar.c:

          bsdtar->day_first = (*nl_langinfo(D_MD_ORDER) == 'd');

causes a segfault, because nl_langinfo returns null.  However, according
to POSIX:

http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/nl_langinfo.html:

"In a locale where langinfo data is not defined, nl_langinfo() shall
return a pointer to the corresponding string in the POSIX locale. In all
locales, nl_langinfo() shall return a pointer to an empty string if item
contains an invalid setting."

Now, this doesn't always happen; I only see it when I run bsdtar.exe in
mintty, but not if I run it in rxvt-unicode, rxvt, cmd/bash, ...

So, it seems to be a weird interaction with something mintty is doing,
and the i18n stuff, but...regardless, cygwin's nl_langinfo() should
never return null.

FWIW, I've put a workaround in bsdtar.c, and will be uploading a new
version shortly.

--
Chuck

--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple