shp2pgsql - illegal number format when specific system locale set

[infrag]

I come across faulty behavior of shp2pgsql tool. When system locale is set to some locale with i.e. different decimal separator sign shp2pgsql produces faulty output.

I had my locale on ubuntu linux set to LANG=cs_CZ.UTF-8 then shp2pgsql output illegal format of GEOMETRY:

... MULTIPOLYGON(((-759009,328 -1010948,384,-758995,543 -1010943,409, ...

You can see the collision of decimal delimiters with point separators. When I changed LOCALE to LANG=en.UTF-8 the output was correct:

... MULTIPOLYGON(((-759009.328 -1010948.384,-758995.543 -1010943.409, ...

The output of shp2pgsql should be locale independent since only one number format is acceptable by postgres/postgis.

Similar faults could exist for various locales and various types which should be output.

[pramsey]

If you "export LANG=C" does the problem go away?

[pramsey]

I cannot reproduce this, for two reasons:

• the default mode of shp2pgsql is to create the geometry in EWKB form, so there's no chance for locale to have anything to do with it
• when I do change my locale (export LANG=de_DE) and force shp2pgsql to emit WKT (-w flag) I still get decimals as "." not as ","

[infrag]

Yes we need to emit WKT (-w flag). Have you tried export LANG=cs_CZ.UTF-8 as i noted in the comment?

[pramsey]

Well, I don't know WTF I was doing last month when testing this, but I got it to reproduce on the first try just now. Will see if we can force locale to be C for our purposes.

[pramsey]

Fixed in 2.1 at r13438 and trunk at r13438