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📄 locale(1) - Get Locale-Specific Information

📝 NAME

locale - get locale-specific information

🚀 Quick Reference

Use Case	Command	Description
View current locale settings	locale	Display all current locale category values
List all available locales	locale -a	Show all installed locales on the system
List available charmaps	locale -m	Display available character mapping files
Get specific keyword value	locale date_fmt	Show value of a locale keyword (e.g., date format)
Get keyword with name	locale -k date_fmt	Display keyword name and value
Get category with keyword names	locale -ck LC_TIME	Show category name and all keyword values
Verbose locale listing	locale -v -a	Include LC_IDENTIFICATION metadata

🔧 SYNOPSIS

locale [option]
locale [option] -a
locale [option] -m
locale [option] name...

📖 DESCRIPTION

The locale command displays information about the current locale, or all locales, on standard output.

When invoked without arguments, locale displays the current locale settings for each locale category (see locale(5)), based on the settings of the environment variables that control the locale (see locale(7)). Values for variables set in the environment are printed without double quotes, implied values are printed with double quotes.

If either the -a or the -m option (or one of their long-format equivalents) is specified, the behavior is as follows:

• -a, --all-locales — Display a list of all available locales. The -v option causes the LC_IDENTIFICATION metadata about each locale to be included in the output.
• -m, --charmaps — Display the available charmaps (character set description files). To display the current character set for the locale, use locale -c charmap.

The locale command can also be provided with one or more arguments, which are the names of locale keywords (for example, date_fmt, ctype-class-names, yesexpr, or decimal_point) or locale categories (for example, LC_CTYPE or LC_TIME). For each argument, the following is displayed:

• For a locale keyword, the value of that keyword to be displayed.
• For a locale category, the values of all keywords in that category are displayed.

📌 Options for Arguments

• -c, --category-name — For a category name argument, write the name of the locale category on a separate line preceding the list of keyword values for that category. For a keyword name argument, write the name of the locale category for this keyword on a separate line preceding the keyword value. This option improves readability when multiple name arguments are specified. It can be combined with the -k option.
• -k, --keyword-name — For each keyword whose value is being displayed, include also the name of that keyword, so that the output has the format: keyword="value"

🔧 Other Options

• -v, --verbose — Display additional information for some command-line option and argument combinations.
• -?, --help — Display a summary of command-line options and arguments and exit.
• --usage — Display a short usage message and exit.
• -V, --version — Display the program version and exit.

📁 FILES

• /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive — Usual default locale archive location.
• /usr/share/i18n/locales — Usual default path for locale definition files.

✅ CONFORMING TO

POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008.

📋 EXAMPLES

$ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

$ locale date_fmt
%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Z %Y

$ locale -k date_fmt
date_fmt="%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Z %Y"

$ locale -ck date_fmt
LC_TIME
date_fmt="%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Z %Y"

$ locale LC_TELEPHONE
+%c (%a) %l
(%a) %l
11
1
UTF-8

$ locale -k LC_TELEPHONE
tel_int_fmt="+%c (%a) %l"
tel_dom_fmt="(%a) %l"
int_select="11"
int_prefix="1"
telephone-codeset="UTF-8"

$ mkdir -p $HOME/.locale
$ I18NPATH=./wrk/ localedef -f UTF-8 -i fi_SE $HOME/.locale/fi_SE.UTF-8
$ LOCPATH=$HOME/.locale LC_ALL=fi_SE.UTF-8 date
$ echo "export LOCPATH=\$HOME/.locale" >> $HOME/.bashrc
$ echo "export LANG=fi_SE.UTF-8" >> $HOME/.bashrc

👀 SEE ALSO

localedef(1), charmap(5), locale(5), locale(7)

---

📄 locale(3perl) - Perl Pragm... to Use or Avoid POSIX Locales

📝 NAME

locale - Perl pragma to use or avoid POSIX locales for built-in operations

⚠️ WARNING

DO NOT USE this pragma in scripts that have multiple threads active. The locale is not local to a single thread. Another thread may change the locale at any time, which could cause at a minimum that a given thread is operating in a locale it isn't expecting to be in. On some platforms, segfaults can also occur. The locale change need not be explicit; some operations cause perl to change the locale itself. You are vulnerable simply by having done a use locale.

🔧 SYNOPSIS

@x = sort @y;      # Native-platform/Unicode code point sort order
{
    use locale;
    @x = sort @y;  # Locale-defined sort order
}
@x = sort @y;      # Native-platform/Unicode code point sort order
                   # again

📖 DESCRIPTION

This pragma tells the compiler to enable (or disable) the use of POSIX locales for built-in operations (for example, LC_CTYPE for regular expressions, LC_COLLATE for string comparison, and LC_NUMERIC for number formatting). Each use locale or no locale affects statements to the end of the enclosing BLOCK.

See perllocale for more detailed information on how Perl supports locales.

On systems that don't have locales, this pragma will cause your operations to behave as if in the C locale; attempts to change the locale will fail.

---

📄 locale(5) - Describes a Locale Definition File

📝 NAME

locale - describes a locale definition file

📖 DESCRIPTION

The locale definition file contains all the information that the localedef(1) command needs to convert it into the binary locale database.

The definition files consist of sections which each describe a locale category in detail. See locale(7) for additional details for these categories.

📝 Syntax

The locale definition file starts with a header that may consist of the following keywords:

• escape_char — followed by a character that should be used as the escape-character for the rest of the file to mark characters that should be interpreted in a special way. It defaults to the backslash (\).
• comment_char — followed by a character that will be used as the comment-character for the rest of the file. It defaults to the number sign (#).

The locale definition has one part for each locale category. Each part can be copied from another existing locale or can be defined from scratch. If the category should be copied, the only valid keyword in the definition is copy followed by the name of the locale in double quotes which should be copied. The exceptions for this rule are LC_COLLATE and LC_CTYPE where a copy statement can be followed by locale-specific rules and selected overrides.

When defining a locale or a category from scratch, an existing system-provided locale definition file should be used as a reference to follow common glibc conventions.

📂 Locale Category Sections

The following category sections are defined by POSIX:

• LC_CTYPE
• LC_COLLATE
• LC_MESSAGES
• LC_MONETARY
• LC_NUMERIC
• LC_TIME

In addition, since version 2.2, the GNU C library supports the following nonstandard categories:

• LC_ADDRESS
• LC_IDENTIFICATION
• LC_MEASUREMENT
• LC_NAME
• LC_PAPER
• LC_TELEPHONE

See locale(7) for a more detailed description of each category.

📬 LC_ADDRESS

The definition starts with the string LC_ADDRESS in the first column.

Allowed keywords: postal_fmt, country_name, country_post, country_ab2, country_ab3, country_num, country_car, country_isbn, lang_name, lang_ab, lang_term, lang_lib.

The definition ends with END LC_ADDRESS.

🔤 LC_CTYPE

Allowed keywords: upper, lower, alpha, digit, space, cntrl, punct, graph, print, xdigit, blank, charclass, toupper, tolower, map totitle, class, charconv, outdigit, map to_inpunct, map to_outpunct, translit_start, include, default_missing, translit_end.

The definition ends with END LC_CTYPE.

📊 LC_COLLATE

Allowed keywords: coll_weight_max, collating-element, collating-symbol, define, reorder-after, reorder-end, reorder-sections-after, reorder-sections-end, script, symbol-equivalence, order_start (with forward, backward, position), order_end.

The definition ends with END LC_COLLATE.

🆔 LC_IDENTIFICATION

Allowed keywords: title, source, address, contact, email, tel, fax, language, territory, audience, application, abbreviation, revision, date, category.

The definition ends with END LC_IDENTIFICATION.

💬 LC_MESSAGES

Allowed keywords: yesexpr, noexpr, yesstr, nostr.

The definition ends with END LC_MESSAGES.

📏 LC_MEASUREMENT

Allowed keyword: measurement (1 = Metric, 2 = US customary).

The definition ends with END LC_MEASUREMENT.

💰 LC_MONETARY

Allowed keywords: int_curr_symbol, currency_symbol, mon_decimal_point, mon_thousands_sep, mon_grouping, positive_sign, negative_sign, int_frac_digits, frac_digits, p_cs_precedes, p_sep_by_space, n_cs_precedes, n_sep_by_space, p_sign_posn, n_sign_posn, int_p_cs_precedes, int_n_cs_precedes, int_p_sep_by_space, int_n_sep_by_space, int_p_sign_posn, int_n_sign_posn.

The definition ends with END LC_MONETARY.

👤 LC_NAME

Mandatory keyword: name_fmt. Other optional keywords: name_gen, name_mr, name_mrs, name_miss, name_ms.

The definition ends with END LC_NAME.

🔢 LC_NUMERIC

Allowed keywords: decimal_point, thousands_sep, grouping.

The definition ends with END LC_NUMERIC.

📄 LC_PAPER

Allowed keywords: height, width.

The definition ends with END LC_PAPER.

📞 LC_TELEPHONE

Allowed keywords: tel_int_fmt, tel_dom_fmt, int_select, int_prefix.

The definition ends with END LC_TELEPHONE.

⏰ LC_TIME

Allowed keywords: abday, day, abmon, mon, d_t_fmt, d_fmt, t_fmt, am_pm, t_fmt_ampm, era, era_d_fmt, era_t_fmt, era_d_t_fmt, alt_digits, week, first_weekday, first_workday, cal_direction, date_fmt.

The definition ends with END LC_TIME.

📁 FILES

• /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive — Usual default locale archive location.
• /usr/share/i18n/locales — Usual default path for locale definition files.

✅ CONFORMING TO

POSIX.2.

📝 NOTES

The collective GNU C library community wisdom regarding abday, day, week, first_weekday, and first_workday states at https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/Locales the following:

• The value of the second week list item specifies the base of the abday and day lists.
• first_weekday specifies the offset of the first day-of-week in the abday and day lists.
• For compatibility reasons, all glibc locales should set the value of the second week list item to 19971130 (Sunday) and base the abday and day lists appropriately, and set first_weekday and first_workday to 1 or 2, depending on whether the week and work week actually starts on Sunday or Monday for the locale.

👀 SEE ALSO

iconv(1), locale(1), localedef(1), localeconv(3), newlocale(3), setlocale(3), strftime(3), strptime(3), uselocale(3), charmap(5), charsets(7), locale(7), unicode(7), utf-8(7)

---

📄 locale(7) - Description of Multilanguage Support

📝 NAME

locale - description of multilanguage support

🔧 SYNOPSIS

#include <locale.h>

📖 DESCRIPTION

A locale is a set of language and cultural rules. These cover aspects such as language for messages, different character sets, lexicographic conventions, and so on. A program needs to be able to determine its locale and act accordingly to be portable to different cultures.

The header <locale.h> declares data types, functions and macros which are useful in this task.

The functions it declares are setlocale(3) to set the current locale, and localeconv(3) to get information about number formatting.

There are different categories for locale information a program might need; they are declared as macros. Using them as the first argument to the setlocale(3) function, it is possible to set one of these to the desired locale:

• LC_ADDRESS (GNU extension, since glibc 2.2) — Change settings that describe the formats (e.g., postal addresses) used to describe locations and geography-related items.
• LC_COLLATE — Governs collation rules for sorting and regular expressions.
• LC_CTYPE — Determines interpretation of byte sequences as characters, character classifications, and transliteration rules.
• LC_IDENTIFICATION (GNU extension, since glibc 2.2) — Change settings that relate to the metadata for the locale.
• LC_MONETARY — Determines formatting for monetary-related numeric values.
• LC_MESSAGES — Affects the language in which messages are displayed and what an affirmative or negative answer looks like.
• LC_MEASUREMENT (GNU extension, since glibc 2.2) — Change settings relating to the measurement system (metric vs US customary).
• LC_NAME (GNU extension, since glibc 2.2) — Change settings that describe the formats used to address persons.
• LC_NUMERIC — Determines formatting rules for nonmonetary numeric values.
• LC_PAPER (GNU extension, since glibc 2.2) — Change settings relating to the dimensions of the standard paper size.
• LC_TELEPHONE (GNU extension, since glibc 2.2) — Change settings that describe the formats to be used with telephone services.
• LC_TIME — Governs formatting for date and time values.
• LC_ALL — All of the above.

If the second argument to setlocale(3) is an empty string, "", for the default locale, it is determined using the following steps:

1. If there is a non-null environment variable LC_ALL, the value of LC_ALL is used.
2. If an environment variable with the same name as one of the categories above exists and is non-null, its value is used for that category.
3. If there is a non-null environment variable LANG, the value of LANG is used.

Values about local numeric formatting is made available in a struct lconv returned by the localeconv(3) function, which has the following declaration:

struct lconv {

    /* Numeric (nonmonetary) information */

    char *decimal_point;     /* Radix character */
    char *thousands_sep;     /* Separator for digit groups to left
                                of radix character */
    char *grouping;     /* Each element is the number of digits in
                           a group; elements with higher indices
                           are further left.  An element with value
                           CHAR_MAX means that no further grouping
                           is done.  An element with value 0 means
                           that the previous element is used for
                           all groups further left. */

    /* Remaining fields are for monetary information */

    char *int_curr_symbol;   /* First three chars are a currency
                                symbol from ISO 4217.  Fourth char
                                is the separator.  Fifth char
                                is '\0'. */
    char *currency_symbol;   /* Local currency symbol */
    char *mon_decimal_point; /* Radix character */
    char *mon_thousands_sep; /* Like thousands_sep above */
    char *mon_grouping;      /* Like grouping above */
    char *positive_sign;     /* Sign for positive values */
    char *negative_sign;     /* Sign for negative values */
    char  int_frac_digits;   /* International fractional digits */
    char  frac_digits;       /* Local fractional digits */
    char  p_cs_precedes;     /* 1 if currency_symbol precedes a
                                positive value, 0 if succeeds */
    char  p_sep_by_space;    /* 1 if a space separates
                                currency_symbol from a positive
                                value */
    char  n_cs_precedes;     /* 1 if currency_symbol precedes a
                                negative value, 0 if succeeds */
    char  n_sep_by_space;    /* 1 if a space separates
                                currency_symbol from a negative
                                value */
    /* Positive and negative sign positions:
       0 Parentheses surround the quantity and currency_symbol.
       1 The sign string precedes the quantity and currency_symbol.
       2 The sign string succeeds the quantity and currency_symbol.
       3 The sign string immediately precedes the currency_symbol.
       4 The sign string immediately succeeds the currency_symbol. */
    char  p_sign_posn;
    char  n_sign_posn;
};

🧩 POSIX.1-2008 Extensions to the Locale API

POSIX.1-2008 standardized a number of extensions to the locale API, based on implementations that first appeared in version 2.3 of the GNU C library. These extensions are designed to address the problem that the traditional locale APIs do not mix well with multithreaded applications and with applications that must deal with multiple locales.

The extensions take the form of new functions for creating and manipulating locale objects (newlocale(3), freelocale(3), duplocale(3), and uselocale(3)) and various new library functions with the suffix "_l" (e.g., toupper_l(3)) that extend the traditional locale-dependent APIs (e.g., toupper(3)) to allow the specification of a locale object that should apply when executing the function.

🌍 ENVIRONMENT

The following environment variable is used by newlocale(3) and setlocale(3), and thus affects all unprivileged localized programs:

• LOCPATH — A list of pathnames, separated by colons (':'), that should be used to find locale data. If this variable is set, only the individual compiled locale data files from LOCPATH and the system default locale data path are used; any available locale archives are not used (see localedef(1)). The individual compiled locale data files are searched for under subdirectories which depend on the currently used locale. For example, when en_GB.UTF-8 is used for a category, the following subdirectories are searched for, in this order: en_GB.UTF-8, en_GB.utf8, en_GB, en.UTF-8, en.utf8, and en.

📁 FILES

• /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive — Usual default locale archive location.
• /usr/lib/locale — Usual default path for compiled individual locale files.

✅ CONFORMING TO

POSIX.1-2001.

👀 SEE ALSO

iconv(1), locale(1), localedef(1), catopen(3), gettext(3), iconv(3), localeconv(3), mbstowcs(3), newlocale(3), ngettext(3), nl_langinfo(3), rpmatch(3), setlocale(3), strcoll(3), strfmon(3), strftime(3), strxfrm(3), uselocale(3), wcstombs(3), locale(5), charsets(7), unicode(7), utf-8(7)

📄 locale(1) - Get Locale-Specific Information 📝 NAME 🚀 Quick Reference 🔧 SYNOPSIS 📖 DESCRIPTION 📁 FILES ✅ CONFORMING TO 📋 EXAMPLES 👀 SEE ALSO 📄 locale(3perl) - Perl Pragm... to Use or Avoid POSIX Locales 📝 NAME ⚠️ WARNING 🔧 SYNOPSIS 📖 DESCRIPTION 📄 locale(5) - Describes a Locale Definition File 📝 NAME 📖 DESCRIPTION 📁 FILES ✅ CONFORMING TO 📝 NOTES 👀 SEE ALSO 📄 locale(7) - Description of Multilanguage Support 📝 NAME 🔧 SYNOPSIS 📖 DESCRIPTION 🌍 ENVIRONMENT 📁 FILES ✅ CONFORMING TO 👀 SEE ALSO