LC_MESSAGES breaks h2xs autoloaded constants on AIX 4.1.4

[p5pRT]

Migrated from rt.perl.org#1015 (status was 'resolved')

Searchable as RT1015$

[p5pRT]

From oracle@pcr8.pcr.com

On AIX 4.1.4, setting LC_MESSAGES to "en_US" changes the messages
returned by strerror(). Specifically, strerror(EINVAL) results in
"A system call received a parameter that is not valid." rather than
"Invalid argument". Modules created by h2xs, including Fcntl, depend
on $!=EINVAL matching /Invalid/ to autoload constants. perllocale.pod
implies that LC_MESSAGES has no effect on the standard Perl distribution.

Of course, it may just be that AIX is flaky.

Perl Info

Site configuration information for perl 5.00503:

Configured by oracle at Wed Jun 23 14:24:59 EDT 1999.

Summary of my perl5 (5.0 patchlevel 5 subversion 3) configuration:
  Platform:
    osname=aix, osvers=4.1.4.0, archname=aix
    uname='aix pcr8 1 4 000031129000 '
    hint=recommended, useposix=true, d_sigaction=define
    usethreads=undef useperlio=undef d_sfio=undef
  Compiler:
    cc='cc', optimize='-O', gccversion=
    cppflags='-D_ALL_SOURCE -D_ANSI_C_SOURCE -D_POSIX_SOURCE -qmaxmem=8192 -I/usr/local/include'
    ccflags ='-D_ALL_SOURCE -D_ANSI_C_SOURCE -D_POSIX_SOURCE -qmaxmem=8192 -I/usr/local/include'
    stdchar='unsigned char', d_stdstdio=define, usevfork=false
    intsize=4, longsize=4, ptrsize=4, doublesize=8
    d_longlong=define, longlongsize=8, d_longdbl=define, longdblsize=8
    alignbytes=8, usemymalloc=n, prototype=define
  Linker and Libraries:
    ld='ld', ldflags =' -L/usr/local/lib'
    libpth=/usr/local/lib /lib /usr/lib /usr/ccs/lib
    libs=-ldbm -lld -lm -lc -lbsd -lPW
    libc=, so=a, useshrplib=false, libperl=libperl.a
  Dynamic Linking:
    dlsrc=dl_aix.xs, dlext=so, d_dlsymun=undef, ccdlflags='-bE:perl.exp'
    cccdlflags=' ', lddlflags='-bhalt:4 -bM:SRE -bI:$(PERL_INC)/perl.exp -bE:$(BASEEXT).exp -b noentry -lc -L/usr/local/lib'

Locally applied patches:
    


@INC for perl 5.00503:
    /home/oracle/perl/
    /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.005/aix
    /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.005
    /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/aix
    /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
    .


Environment for perl 5.00503:
    HOME=/home/oracle
    LANG=C
    LANGUAGE (unset)
    LC_MESSAGES=en_US
    LC__FASTMSG=true
    LD_LIBRARY_PATH (unset)
    LOGDIR (unset)
    PATH=/usr/bin:
    PERLLIB=/home/oracle/perl/
    PERL_BADLANG (unset)
    SHELL=/usr/bin/ksh

[p5pRT]

From [Unknown Contact. See original ticket]

This is the original report​:

On AIX 4.1.4, setting LC_MESSAGES to "en_US" changes the messages
returned by strerror(). Specifically, strerror(EINVAL) results in
"A system call received a parameter that is not valid." rather than
"Invalid argument". Modules created by h2xs, including Fcntl, depend
on $!=EINVAL matching /Invalid/ to autoload constants. perllocale.pod
implies that LC_MESSAGES has no effect on the standard Perl distribution.

Of course, it may just be that AIX is flaky.

I recommend the following change to bleadperl to fix​:

Inline Patch

--- h2xs.orig   Thu Jul 27 11:45:41 2000
+++ h2xs.PL     Thu Jul 27 11:43:29 2000
@@ -815,7 +815,7 @@
     croak "&$module::constant not defined" if \$constname eq 'constant';
     my \$val = constant(\$constname, \@_ ? \$_[0] : 0);
     if (\$! != 0) {
-       if (\$! =~ /Invalid/ || \$!{EINVAL}) {
+       if (\$! =~ /(In|not )valid/ || \$!{EINVAL}) {
            \$AutoLoader::AUTOLOAD = \$AUTOLOAD;
            goto &AutoLoader::AUTOLOAD;
        }

[p5pRT]

From The RT System itself

Nowadays also the numeric error code is checked.