Python 2.3 (#1, Jul 30 2003, 11:19:43) 
[GCC 3.2] on linux2 
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more 
information. 
>>> import locale as lo 
>>> lo.setlocale(lo.LC_ALL, 'de') 
Traceback (most recent call last): 
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? 
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.3/locale.py", line 381, in 
setlocale 
    return _setlocale(category, locale) 
locale.Error: locale setting not supported 
 
The above was taken from the example section of the 
locale module documentation. 
 
But this works: 
 
>>> lo.setlocale(lo.LC_ALL, 'de_DE') 
'de_DE' 
>>> 
 
So the error message should at least be changed to 
"unknown/unsupported locale" and the documentation 
example updated to 'de_DE' instead of 'de'. 
 
However, if there are no side effects, I'd prefer to 
change the locale.setlocale() implementation to always 
normalize() the locale: 
 
def setlocale(category, locale=None): 
    if locale: 
        if type(locale) is not type(""): 
            # convert to string 
            locale = _build_localename(locale) 
        locale = normalize(locale) 
    return _setlocale(category, locale) 
 

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I forgot to mention that the following also works: 
 
>>> import locale 
>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, ("de", None)) 
'de_DE.ISO8859-1' 
>>> 
 
So the it really seems to be an implementation rather than a 
documentation issue. 

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I fail to see the bug. "locale setting not supported" is
exactly identical, in its meaning, with "unsupported locale".

Changing the example to de_DE won't help much, either, since
the next system might support "de" but not "de_DE", or it
might support "de_DE.ISO-8859-1" only. Locale names are not
standardized.

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(1) I read "locale setting not supported" and understood (not 
being a native speaker) "(any) locale setting not supported", 
whereas "unknown/unsupported locale" would make it clear 
you can set a locale but not the one that was requested. 
 
(2) I would expect setlocale(..., "de") and setlocale(..., 
("de", None)) to either both fail or both succeed, but 
currently only the latter form works; thus the proposed 
change in the code. 
 
I hope this clarifies the issue and you will reconsider. 

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Just my 2c, but I would agree that a wording change to 
either "unsupported locale setting" or "%s locale setting not 
supported" with the attempted locale would be much clearer.

No opinion on (2) :)

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This bug is now fixed in

liblocale.tex 1.35
_localemodule.c 2.41
_localemodule.c 2.40.4.1
NEWS 1.831.4.28
liblocale.tex 1.33.10.2

by changing the error message, and changing the example to
read de_DE.