Bug 192

Summary:	monthname abbrev more than 3 chars?
Product:	glibc	Reporter:	Egmont Koblinger <egmont>
Component:	localedata	Assignee:	Petter Reinholdtsen <pere>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	minor	CC:	drepper.fsp, glibc-bugs
Priority:	P2	Flags:	fweimer: security-
Version:	2.3.3
Target Milestone:	---
Host:		Target:
Build:		Last reconfirmed:
Attachments:	correct hungarian month name abbrevs

Description Egmont Koblinger 2004-05-31 11:43:56 UTC

In Hungarian the official abbreviation of some monthnames are longer than 3
chars (4 or 5). Please see the attached patch.

Is it right to have month name abbreviations that are longer than 3 chars in
libc? It causes troubles in some applications, e.g. mc goes stupid, and listing
within ncftp and "ls -l --time-style=locale" looks a bit silly. However, IMHO
it's better if libc provides correct monthnames and the application does some
workaround if it cannot handle more than three chars.

Furthermore, if there existed a format string to strftime() which told to
display %b in no more than 3 chars, it would help applications (e.g. mc).
(Please consider this a feature request :-)

Comment 1 Egmont Koblinger 2004-05-31 11:44:33 UTC

Created attachment 96 [details]
correct hungarian month name abbrevs

Comment 2 Petter Reinholdtsen 2004-07-21 07:25:17 UTC

Hungarian is not the only locale with month apprevations longer than
3 chars.  The nn_NO locale have one "lau " value in LC_CTIME:abday, while the rest of the strings are thre chars.
I'm not sure if it is a good thing.  As you mention, a lot of programs
expect all week day apprevations to have the same length - 3 chars.

Comment 3 Ulrich Drepper 2005-10-14 20:27:59 UTC

There is nothing wrong with longer abbreviations.  The important thing is they
are understandable by the audience.  The rest are bugs in the applications
making wrong assumptions.

Comment 4 Egmont Koblinger 2005-10-17 10:39:52 UTC

I admit that my description is not fully clear, but take a look at the patch,
it is in the reverse way than you think.

Currently glibc uses 3 letter abbreviations for all the hungarian months,
though the correct would be a 4 or 5 letter abbrev for some of them (febr,
márc, szept). If there's nothing wrong with them (as you say) then please
commit this patch. Thanks! :)

Comment 5 Ulrich Drepper 2006-05-01 17:55:23 UTC

Applied to CVS.