Subject: Re: bug#39248: format-time-string ignores user's preferred locale

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2020 16:19:21 +0200

> From: "Paul W. Rankin" <[email-masked]>
> Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked]
> Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2020 16:44:11 +1000
> 
> So, this works:
> 
>     (setq system-time-locale (getenv "LANG"))
>     (format-time-string "%x")
>     -> "23/01/2020"
> 
> But in the Elisp manual:
> 
>  -- Variable: system-time-locale
>      This variable specifies the locale to use for formatting time
>      values.  Changing the locale can cause messages to appear according
>      to the conventions of a different language.  If the variable is
>      ‘nil’, the locale is specified by environment variables in the
>      usual POSIX fashion.
> 
> So the issue appears to be instead that ^this doesn't seem to be
> happening...

No, having system-time-locale as nil is perfectly normal.  I asked the
question so we'd know whether that variable is part of the issue.  It
doesn't seem to be, AFAIU.