4 ms·
So another dumb question, how do we get from it being a very bad thing in shell scripting to it being a very bad thing in general as the post states? By the wa
by genericuser 11y ago
So another dumb question, how do we get from it being a very bad thing in shell scripting to it being a very bad thing in general as the post states?
By the way thank you again for taking the time to answer my questions, I do appreciate it as these are honestly things I am wondering. I seem to be getting down voted because I am so stupid, but at least you are helping me learn to be less stupid on this subject (which believe it or not everyone else the down votes don't actually accomplish).
- mikeash 11y agoI don't see any dumb questions on your part. Maybe some differences of opinion. Don't ask me about the downvotes. I personally only downvote stuff that's deeply counterproductive. But it seems other people are more twitchy with them. Anyway, I take the post as just saying that internationalization is bad for shell commands, not necessarily for other things. Shell commands are unusual in that they are both a programming interface and a human interface. That puts strange constraints on them that don't show up elsewhere. For things that are clearly just a human interface (for example, a GUI app) you definitely want to localize. For things that are clearly just a computer interface (for example, a REST API) you definitely don't want to. But how do you deal with something like this where it's half and half? Trying to optimize for one use case can hurt the other, which is what this post is trying to show.