Hi, On 2014-06-11 13:07, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote: > On 06/11/2014 10:09 AM, Marko Myllynen wrote: >> On 2014-06-10 22:28, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote: >>> On 06/10/2014 10:38 AM, Marko Myllynen wrote: >>>> >>>> while updating the locale pages I noticed there was no iconv(1) page >>>> in upstream so I wrote one, please see below. >>> >>> Thanks for doing this. Could I ask you to look at the comments below, and send >>> a revised version, please. >> >> ok, please see below, hopefully the explanation are now clearer >> without going into too low level details. > > Yes, thanks, a lot better. I have applied this, but have a question, below. > >> +.SH ENVIRONMENT >> +Internally, the >> +.B iconv >> +program uses the >> +.BR iconv (3) >> +function which in turn uses >> +.I gconv >> +modules to convert to and from a character set. >> +.B iconv >> +supports any character set for which a >> +corresponding gconv configuration and module are provided for. >> +By default, the system provided gconv configuration and modules >> +are used, but >> +.B GCONV_PATH >> +can be defined as a list of pathnames, separated by colons (\(aq:\(aq), >> +for gconv configuration and module search path, >> +to be searched prior to the system provided configuration and modules. > > That last sentence is long and hard to parse. What exactly is GCONV_PATH? > Is it a list of configuration paths? module search paths? I am > left uncertain after reading that sentence. yeah, I think I was trying to make a long story too short. When a program, such as iconv(1), uses iconv(3) (the function), it first needs to allocate a conversion descriptor with iconv_open(3) and during the iconv_open() call glibc, if GCONV_PATH is not set, loads the system gconv cache file created by iconvconfig(8) and based on the configuration then loads the needed gconv modules for conversion (an example of a gconv module is CP1252.so). If GCONV_PATH is set, glibc first tries to load the configuration files from the paths in GCONV_PATH followed by the system configuration file. If a directory does not contain a gconv module configuration file, possible gconv modules in it are ignored. If a directory contains a gconv module configuration file and it is determined that a needed module for this conversion is available in the directory, then the needed module is loaded from there, the order being so that the first suitable module found in GCONV_PATH is used. This allows users to use custom modules and even replace system provided modules by providing such modules in GCONV_PATH directories. Thanks, -- Marko Myllynen -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-man" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
