sessionInfo() fails to correctly detect locale settings

Liviu Andronic wrote:

Dear R devels
Yesterday I was slightly surprised to notice that R incorrectly
detected some of the locale settings. I am not sure whether this is
important, but I preferred to drop a message. In the R output below,
some entries that should have been "en_GB.UTF-8" are presented as "C".
Regards
Liviu

R only sets the entries it needs. In particular, you most definitely do
not want LC_NUMERIC automatically set to your current locale, as this
may cause system I/O to use "," instead of "." in numbers.

sessionInfo()

R version 2.9.1 (2009-06-26)
x86_64-pc-linux-gnu

locale:

LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=en_GB.UTF-8;LC_COLLATE=en_GB.UTF-8;LC_MONETARY=C;LC_MESSAGES=en_GB.UTF-8;LC_PAPER=en_GB.UTF-8;LC_NAME=C;LC_ADDRESS=C;LC_TELEPHONE=C;LC_MEASUREMENT=en_GB.UTF-8;LC_IDENTIFICATION=C

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

other attached packages:
[1] fortunes_1.3-6 relimp_1.0-1

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] tcltk_2.9.1


liviu at debian-liv:~$ locale
LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

--
  O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             ?ster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B
 c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K
(*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph:  (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk)              FAX: (+45) 35327907