locale(1) General Commands Manual locale(1)
NAME
locale - get locale-specific (NLS) information
SYNOPSIS
name ...
DESCRIPTION
The command displays information about the current locale or about available locales.
When invoked without arguments, displays the name and actual or implied value of each of the locale-related environment variables in the
order shown below, one per line:
An actual value is the value the variable actually has in the user's environment. An implied value is derived from the value of another
variable. Implied values are displayed enclosed in double quotes, while actual values are unquoted.
The determination of implied values is that if the variable is present and has a non-null value, that is the actual value for and all of
the other variables take its value as an implied value. If is not set, all of the variables that are set are shown with their value as an
actual value. Any that have no value are shown with the value of the environment variable as their implied value. is displayed as if it
has no value. If is set to NULL or to an invalid string, all of the variables are set to the default "C" locale.
The value of has precedence over any one of the environment variables and If environment variables are not defined, provides the default.
See catopen(3C) for more details.
The command can take multiple arguments, which may be locale category names, locale keywords, or the special word (see localedef(1M) for a
description of locale keywords and charmaps). If an argument is a keyword, the value associated with that keyword in the current environ-
ment is displayed and possibly other information, depending on selected options. If an argument is a category name (i.e., the values of
all keywords defined in that category are displayed. If an argument is the special word the charmap file (if any) that was used in the
definition of the current locale is displayed.
Non-printable characters are printed as hexadecimal values in the form,
except that if a different escape character has been defined for the locale, it is displayed instead of the "".
Options
The following options are available:
List all available locales.
These are the possible meaningful values that can be assigned to or any of the variables on the system. They are depen-
dent upon which locales have been installed on the system. By default on a PA-RISC system, the locales in are listed. By
default on an Itanium(R)-based system, the locales in are listed. This option takes 32 (for ILP32, 32-bit int, long,
pointer, 32-bit offset) or 64 (for LP64, 64-bit long, pointer, 64-bit offset) as its argument.
Display 32-bit locales for PA-RISC and Itanium-based systems.
Display 32-bit locales for PA-RISC and Itanium-based systems.
Display only 64-bit locales on 64-bit systems.
If executed on a 32-bit system, an error message is returned.
List Itanium-based system 32-bit locales, Itanium-based system 64-bit
locales, PA-RISC 32-bit locales and PA-RISC 64-bit locales available on the system.
Display a list of available charmap files on the system.
See localedef(1M) for a definition of charmap files and their usage.
Display names of locale categories that have been selected
either explicitly or by giving a keyword contained therein. This option may be used with the option.
Display names of keywords that have been selected
either explicitly or by providing their containing category as an argument. Keyword names and values are displayed as:
<keyword>=<value>
Without the option, only the values are displayed. This option can be used with the option.
Display 32-bit PA-RISC locales. (Option available only on Itanium-based systems.)
Display 64-bit PA-RISC locales. (Option available only on Itanium-based systems.)
name Specify the locale category name, locale keyword, or the special word
EXTERNAL INFLUENCES
Environment Variables
provides a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. If is unset or null, the default value of "C" (see
lang(5)) is used. If any of the internationalization variables contains an invalid setting, will behave as if all internationalization
variables are set to "C". See environ(5).
when set to a non-empty string value, overrides the values of all other internationalization variables.
determines the interpretation of text as single and/or multi-byte characters, the classification of characters as printable, and the char-
acters matched by character class expressions in regular expressions.
determines the locale that should be used to affect the format and content of diagnostic messages written to standard error, and informa-
tive messages written to standard output.
determines the location of message catalog for the processing of
International Code Set Support
Single- and multi-byte character code sets are supported.
RETURN VALUE
The command exits with one of the following values:
All requested information was found and displayed successfully.
An error occurred in either finding or displaying the information.
EXAMPLES
If the locale environment variables are set as:
the command:
gives the following output:
The command:
produces:
If is set to and no other locale variables are set, the command:
produces:
which correspond to the keywords decimal_point, thousands_sep, grouping, and alt_digit.
SEE ALSO
localedef(1M), catopen(3C), localeconv(3C), nl_langinfo(3C), setlocale(3C), charmap(4), localedef(4), environ(5), lang(5).
STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
locale(1)