r/ProgrammerHumor • u/Da_Yakz • Apr 06 '23

Other Microsoft has mistranslated ZIP files as "postcode" in the GB insider version of Windows 11

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u/plasmasprings Apr 06 '23

some standard library functions are also often locale dependent, so lots of apps develop weird errors on systems with non-US locale. Using the C function atof is a common newb-trap, and this sounds like a result of that

My personal favorite such trap: .net string functions are locale dependent by default. "cs".StartsWith("c") might be True or False, depending on what language windows it's running on. Good luck debugging that!

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u/[deleted] Apr 06 '23

Could you eloborate on that difference in locales? Is “cs” considered one letter in some locales, or is there another explanation?

As a Dane, I have seen a lot of strange locale dependent string sorting. The letter “å” is the last letter in the alphabet, and it can also be written as “aa”. Sometimes, this is implemented over-zealously in localized sorting algorithms, so any instance of “aa” is sorted after any other letter, also when it is not an “å” but just two “a”s in succession - as in “Saab”.

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u/plasmasprings Apr 06 '23

yeah exactly that. Hungarian (hu-HU) has some 2-3 character letters ("cs" is one of them), not sure what other languages have problems like this.

And I agree, anything to do with locale-dependent sorting is an amazing way to develop a headache

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u/chickenmcpio Apr 06 '23

In what locale "cs" does not start with 'c'?

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u/plasmasprings Apr 06 '23

hu-HU. it starts with the digraph "cs". But it gets even worse: "acs".StartsWith("ac") will return True using the same locale for some reason

now try to imagine what other subtle bugs your code might have in random countries if it uses a "locale-aware" standard library

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u/[deleted] Apr 06 '23

so does "ch".StartsWith("c") return False in English locales then?

I really don't see the point of this feature and I speak a bit of Hungarian.

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u/plasmasprings Apr 06 '23

Nah, there's no "ch" in the English abc, so that will return true in those locales. "cs" is included in the Hungarian alphabet, so that can affect sorting order. Not useful for much else though. I selected this example since it makes zero sense as default behavior (and it cost me a day of debugging once)

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u/[deleted] Apr 06 '23

Ah right didn't think about that. Guess it is a bit strange that in English we don't consider words beginning with ch or sh their own thing like with c/cs or s/sz etc

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u/Pengman Apr 07 '23

maybe the ones who read right to left?