locale.py fails if LANG is UTF-8

[Patrick Lauber <patrick.lauber@…>]

on OSX Leopard with macports, mysql and postgresql LANG is defined as: UTF-8 ... on Tiger it was empty
This somehow breaks django:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/locale.py" in getdefaultlocale

441. return _parse_localename(localename)

File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/locale.py" in _parse_localename

373. raise ValueError, 'unknown locale: %s' % localename

ValueError at /admin/contact/company/
unknown locale: UTF-8

[Patrick Lauber <patrick.lauber@…>]

ok the new terminal app on leopard exports the LANG variable. it can be disabled but i think a lot of people that will use Leopard will have the same problem because it is set as default.

[Malcolm Tredinnick]

This is really a bug in Leopard. UTF-8 doesn't look like a valid value for the LANG environment variable. It should be something of the form language[_territory][.codeset], where UTF-8 is only the codeset part.

As you can see from the traceback, it isn't Django that's having the problem here. It's Python's standard locale library.

We can probably put a workaround into Django, but you should also file a bug with Apple, please, so that they fix this. It's just dumb.

[Malcolm Tredinnick]

Further feedback in ​this django-users thread and, particularly, ​here and ​here (found by Karen Tracy), suggest it's a Leopard bug.

I'll try to work out a robust way to ignore the problem in Django and not crash, but that's all we can do. We can't fix bad settings, so users will have to configure their machines by using the workarounds in the above links.

[Karen Tracey <kmtracey@…>]

I claim one free pass, no expiration date, on leaving an 'l' out of Malcolm. :)

[Eduard Grebe <eduardgrebe@…>]

I can confirm that the easiest workaround is to uncheck "Set LANG environment variable on sturtup" on the "advanced" tab in Terminal's preferences.

[Malcolm Tredinnick]

(In [7184]) Fixed #5846 -- Bullet-proofed the default timezone encoding test.

[vitali.gribov@…]

I'm also Mac OS X Leopard user and I have same problem.

# locale
LANG=
LC_COLLATE="C"
LC_CTYPE="UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="C"
LC_MONETARY="C"
LC_NUMERIC="C"
LC_TIME="C"
LC_ALL=

# python -c 'import locale; print(locale.getdefaultlocale());'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/locale.py", line 441, in getdefaultlocale
    return _parse_localename(localename)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/locale.py", line 373, in _parse_localename
    raise ValueError, 'unknown locale: %s' % localename
ValueError: unknown locale: UTF-8

When I simply exported variable LANG:

# export LANG=ru_RU.UTF
# locale
LANG="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_CTYPE="UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

I had same error again.

But when I did export for LC_CTYPE:

# export LC_CTYPE=ru_RU.UTF-8
# locale
LANG="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_CTYPE="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=
# python -c 'import locale; print(locale.getdefaultlocale());'
('ru_RU', 'UTF8')

It is because the sequence of environment variables check in python: LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG, LANGUAGE.

Note for Mac users:

# export LC_CTYPE=ru_RU.UTF-8
# locale
LANG=
LC_COLLATE="C"
LC_CTYPE="ru_RU.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="C"
LC_MONETARY="C"
LC_NUMERIC="C"
LC_TIME="C"
LC_ALL=

[vitali.gribov@…]

Sorry, I did mistake...

# export LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8

[anonymous]

Should be LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8 without inverted comma's not LANG="ru_RU.UTF-8" otherwise will not work

[us.ryokousha@…]

This problem occurs due to an error with Mac OS X terminal and can be resolved in the the Terminal's preferences>advanced settings tab by unchecking "set locale environment variables on startup". This solution was found ​Here.