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LOCALE(1P) POSIX Programmer's Manual LOCALE(1P)
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux
implementation of this interface may differ (consult the
corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or
the interface may not be implemented on Linux.
locale — get locale-specific information
locale [−a|−m]
locale [−ck] name...
The locale utility shall write information about the current locale
environment, or all public locales, to the standard output. For the
purposes of this section, a public locale is one provided by the
implementation that is accessible to the application.
When locale is invoked without any arguments, it shall summarize the
current locale environment for each locale category as determined by
the settings of the environment variables defined in the Base
Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter 7, Locale.
When invoked with operands, it shall write values that have been
assigned to the keywords in the locale categories, as follows:
* Specifying a keyword name shall select the named keyword and the
category containing that keyword.
* Specifying a category name shall select the named category and
all keywords in that category.
The locale utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of
POSIX.1‐2008, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines.
The following options shall be supported:
−a Write information about all available public locales. The
available locales shall include POSIX, representing the
POSIX locale. The manner in which the implementation
determines what other locales are available is
implementation-defined.
−c Write the names of selected locale categories; see the
STDOUT section. The −c option increases readability when
more than one category is selected (for example, via more
than one keyword name or via a category name). It is valid
both with and without the −k option.
−k Write the names and values of selected keywords. The
implementation may omit values for some keywords; see the
OPERANDS section.
−m Write names of available charmaps; see the Base Definitions
volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 6.1, Portable Character
Set.
The following operand shall be supported:
name The name of a locale category as defined in the Base
Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter 7, Locale, the
name of a keyword in a locale category, or the reserved
name charmap. The named category or keyword shall be
selected for output. If a single name represents both a
locale category name and a keyword name in the current
locale, the results are unspecified. Otherwise, both
category and keyword names can be specified as name
operands, in any sequence. It is implementation-defined
whether any keyword values are written for the categories
LC_CTYPE and LC_COLLATE.
Not used.
None.
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of
locale:
LANG Provide a default value for the internationalization
variables that are unset or null. (See the Base Definitions
volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 8.2, Internationalization
Variables for the precedence of internationalization
variables used to determine the values of locale
categories.)
LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of
all the other internationalization variables.
LC_CTYPE Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of
bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte
as opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments and input
files).
LC_MESSAGES
Determine the locale that should be used to affect the
format and contents of diagnostic messages written to
standard error.
NLSPATH Determine the location of message catalogs for the
processing of LC_MESSAGES.
The application shall ensure that the LANG, LC_*, and NLSPATH
environment variables specify the current locale environment to be
written out; they shall be used if the −a option is not specified.
Default.
The LANG variable shall be written first using the format:
"LANG=%s\n", <value>
If LANG is not set or is an empty string, the value is the empty
string.
If locale is invoked without any options or operands, the names and
values of the LC_* environment variables described in this volume of
POSIX.1‐2008 shall be written to the standard output, one variable
per line, and each line using the following format. Only those
variables set in the environment and not overridden by LC_ALL shall
be written using this format:
"%s=%s\n", <variable_name>, <value>
The names of those LC_* variables associated with locale categories
defined in this volume of POSIX.1‐2008 that are not set in the
environment or are overridden by LC_ALL shall be written in the
following format:
"%s=\"%s\"\n", <variable_name>, <implied value>
The <implied value> shall be the name of the locale that has been
selected for that category by the implementation, based on the values
in LANG and LC_ALL, as described in the Base Definitions volume of
POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter 8, Environment Variables.
The <value> and <implied value> shown above shall be properly quoted
for possible later reentry to the shell. The <value> shall not be
quoted using double-quotes (so that it can be distinguished by the
user from the <implied value> case, which always requires double-
quotes).
The LC_ALL variable shall be written last, using the first format
shown above. If it is not set, it shall be written as:
"LC_ALL=\n"
If any arguments are specified:
1. If the −a option is specified, the names of all the public
locales shall be written, each in the following format:
"%s\n", <locale name>
2. If the −c option is specified, the names of all selected
categories shall be written, each in the following format:
"%s\n", <category name>
If keywords are also selected for writing (see following items),
the category name output shall precede the keyword output for
that category.
If the −c option is not specified, the names of the categories
shall not be written; only the keywords, as selected by the
<name> operand, shall be written.
3. If the −k option is specified, the names and values of selected
keywords shall be written. If a value is non-numeric and is not a
compound keyword value, it shall be written in the following
format:
"%s=\"%s\"\n", <keyword name>, <keyword value>
If a value is a non-numeric compound keyword value, it shall
either be written in the format:
"%s=\"%s\"\n", <keyword name>, <keyword value>
where the <keyword value> is a single string of values separated
by <semicolon> characters, or it shall be written in the format:
"%s=%s\n", <keyword name>, <keyword value>
where the <keyword value> is encoded as a set of strings, each
enclosed in double-quotation-marks, separated by <semicolon>
characters.
If the keyword was charmap, the name of the charmap (if any) that
was specified via the localedef −f option when the locale was
created shall be written, with the word charmap as
<keyword name>.
If a value is numeric, it shall be written in one of the
following formats:
"%s=%d\n", <keyword name>, <keyword value>
"%s=%c%o\n", <keyword name>, <escape character>, <keyword value>
"%s=%cx%x\n", <keyword name>, <escape character>, <keyword value>
where the <escape character> is that identified by the
escape_char keyword in the current locale; see the Base
Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 7.3, Locale
Definition.
Compound keyword values (list entries) shall be separated in the
output by <semicolon> characters. When included in keyword
values, the <semicolon>, <backslash>, double-quote, and any
control character shall be preceded (escaped) with the escape
character.
4. If the −k option is not specified, selected keyword values shall
be written, each in the following format:
"%s\n", <keyword value>
If the keyword was charmap, the name of the charmap (if any) that
was specified via the localedef −f option when the locale was
created shall be written.
5. If the −m option is specified, then a list of all available
charmaps shall be written, each in the format:
"%s\n", <charmap>
where <charmap> is in a format suitable for use as the option-
argument to the localedef −f option.
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.
None.
None.
The following exit values shall be returned:
0 All the requested information was found and output
successfully.
>0 An error occurred.
Default.
The following sections are informative.
If the LANG environment variable is not set or set to an empty value,
or one of the LC_* environment variables is set to an unrecognized
value, the actual locales assumed (if any) are implementation-defined
as described in the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter
8, Environment Variables.
Implementations are not required to write out the actual values for
keywords in the categories LC_CTYPE and LC_COLLATE; however, they
must write out the categories (allowing an application to determine,
for example, which character classes are available).
In the following examples, the assumption is that locale environment
variables are set as follows:
LANG=locale_x
LC_COLLATE=locale_y
The command locale would result in the following output:
LANG=locale_x
LC_CTYPE="locale_x"
LC_COLLATE=locale_y
LC_TIME="locale_x"
LC_NUMERIC="locale_x"
LC_MONETARY="locale_x"
LC_MESSAGES="locale_x"
LC_ALL=
The order of presentation of the categories is not specified by this
volume of POSIX.1‐2008.
The command:
LC_ALL=POSIX locale −ck decimal_point
would produce:
LC_NUMERIC
decimal_point="."
The following command shows an application of locale to determine
whether a user-supplied response is affirmative:
if printf "%s\n$response" | grep −Eq "$(locale yesexpr)"
then
affirmative processing goes here
else
non-affirmative processing goes here
fi
The output for categories LC_CTYPE and LC_COLLATE has been made
implementation-defined because there is a questionable value in
having a shell script receive an entire array of characters. It is
also difficult to return a logical collation description, short of
returning a complete localedef source.
The −m option was included to allow applications to query for the
existence of charmaps. The output is a list of the charmaps
(implementation-supplied and user-supplied, if any) on the system.
The −c option was included for readability when more than one
category is selected (for example, via more than one keyword name or
via a category name). It is valid both with and without the −k
option.
The charmap keyword, which returns the name of the charmap (if any)
that was used when the current locale was created, was included to
allow applications needing the information to retrieve it.
According to the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section
6.1, Portable Character Set, the standard requires that all supported
locales must have the same encoding for <period> and <slash>, because
these two characters are used within the locale-independent pathname
resolution sequence. Therefore, it would be an error if locale −a
listed both ASCII and EBCDIC-based locales, since those two encodings
do not share the same representation for either <period> or <slash>.
Any system that supports both environments would be expected to
provide two POSIX locales, one in either codeset, where only the
locales appropriate to the current environment can be visible at a
time. In an XSI-compliant implementation, the dd utility is the only
portable means for performing conversions between the two character
sets.
None.
localedef(1p)
The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 6.1, Portable
Character Set, Chapter 7, Locale, Chapter 8, Environment Variables,
Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information
Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open
Group Base Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open
Group. (This is POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1
applied.) In the event of any discrepancy between this version and
the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and
The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original
Standard can be obtained online at http://www.unix.org/online.html .
Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are
most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the
source files to man page format. To report such errors, see
https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
IEEE/The Open Group 2013 LOCALE(1P)
Pages that refer to this page: localedef(1p)