Re: Thread-unsafe coding in ecpg

Michael Meskes <meskes(at)postgresql(dot)org> writes:
>> While (b) has more theoretical purity, I'm inclined to think it
>> doesn't really improve anybody's life compared to (a), because
>> --disable-thread-safety doesn't actually stop anyone from using
>> libpq or ecpglib in threaded environments. It just makes it
>> more likely to fail when they do.

> The question is, what do we do on those platforms? Use setlocale() or
> fallback to (a) and document that ecpg has to run in a C locale?

No, we shouldn't use setlocale(), because it clearly is hazardous
even on platforms where it doesn't fail outright. I don't see
anything so wrong with just documenting the hazard. The situation
isn't noticeably more dangerous than simple use of the C library;
sscanf, strtod, etc are all likely to do surprising things when
LC_NUMERIC isn't C.

> We could also rewrite the parsing of numbers to not be locale
> dependent.

Perhaps, but that seems like a giant undertaking. I'm not excited
about duplicating strtod(), for instance.

regards, tom lane