Wrong locale when using R from shell

On Mar 22, 2010, at 6:06 PM, Erich Studerus wrote:

I typed "export" into the mac terminal to see the setup of my system 
variables. Under language I get LANG="de_CH.UTF-8". So it seems my system 
variable for language is set up correctly.

Nope ;). I assume you're looking in Terminal which sets the LANG variable 
according to its preferences - it is NOT set by the shell.

It doesn't make sense that Lyx would force C locale, although I don't know 
where I can check this. I'm using the regular Lyx/Sweave setup described 
here:
http://wiki.lyx.org/LyX/LyxWithRThroughSweave

I dont have this locale problem on my Windows 7 computer. I don't 
understand, why R can dectect the correct locale when started from the 
terminal or as R.app but not from the shell. How do these running modes 
differently look up environmental variables?

Both of them set LANG explicitly - it's that easy. Apparently LyX doesn't. 
Again, you're barking up the wrong tree - it's not R's fault since R gives 
you what you ask for - namely the C locale. If LyX uses a shell to run R, 
it should be as easy as replacing "R" with "LANG=en_US.UTF-8 R" or 
whichever you prefer. I don't use LyX so I don't know what where exactly 
you have to change it. Note that the locale is NOT changed in the 
system-wide startup scripts (by default).

Cheers,
Simon

Regards,
Erich

On Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:09:21 -0400
Simon Urbanek <simon.urbanek at r-project.org> wrote:

On Mar 22, 2010, at 16:32 , Erich Studerus wrote:

Hello

I'm using Lyx with Sweave on Mac OS X 10.5.8 with R version 2.10.1.  When 
I compile Lyx documents, R is called from shell to process R  code chunks 
contained in the Lyx document. Unfortunately, R does not  automatically 
detect the correct locale when called from shell. I  figured out that R 
uses the C locale in shell mode by embedding the  following code in Lyx

<<echo=F>>=
sys.getlocale()
@

When I start R from the terminal and also in the R.app I get the  correct 
locale:
de_CH.UTF-8/de_CH.UTF-8/C/C/de_CH.UTF-8/de_UTF-8

How I can I get the correct locale when calling R from shell?

Setup your environment accordingly? This has nothing to do with R but your 
environment (LANG, LANGUAGE, LC_xxx) - which is what determines  the 
locale. The default locale settings are system-dependent, so  either your 
system default locale is C or Lyx forces C locale for the  shell it starts. 
For details on locale specifications see, e.g.:
http://www.gnu.org/software/hello/manual/gettext/Locale-Environment-Variables.html#Locale-Environment-Variables
http://opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007908799/xbd/envvar.html
Cheers,
Simon