locale(1) General Commands Manual locale(1)
NAME
locale - Displays information about locales
SYNOPSIS
locale [-a | -m]
locale [-c] [-k] name...
STANDARDS
Interfaces documented on this reference page conform to industry standards as follows:
locale: XCU5.0
Refer to the standards(5) reference page for more information about industry standards and associated tags.
OPTIONS
Writes information about all available public locales. Writes the names of the specified locale categories. Writes the names and values
of specified locale keywords. Writes the names of all character map (charmap) files that are available for specification to the -f option
of the localedef command.
OPERANDS
Specifies one or more of the following: A locale category, such as LC_TIME A keyword, such as am_pm in a locale category The reserved word
charmap, which requests the name of the character map file used to produce the current locale
Different types of names can be intermixed in any order. However, if a single name represents both a locale category name and a key-
word name in the current locale, results are undefined.
DESCRIPTION
The locale command without any options or arguments writes to standard output the names and values of all the current locale environment
variables, such as LANG and LC_COLLATE.
The locale command with the -a or -m options displays information about available locales and character maps on your system. If the -a
option is specified, locale writes the names of all available public locales. These are locales that are available to any application. If
the -m option is specified, locale writes a list of the names of all available character-mapping files. These values are suitable variable
values for the -f option with the localedef command.
The locale command with the name operand displays information about locale categories and keywords in the current locale. For example, the
command could display information about the decimal_point keyword in the LC_NUMERIC category or information about all keywords in the
LC_NUMERIC category. The name operand can be either a locale category, a keyword from a category, or the keyword charmap.
The following table shows how the -c and -k options determine the level of information displayed by the locale command with respect to
locale keywords:
Options Set Information Written to Standard Output
None Value of keyword specified by the name operand or values
of all keywords in the category specified by the name
operand.
-c Name of category containing the keyword specified by the
name operand or the name of the category specified by
the name operand, followed by values of locale keywords.
-k Names and values of locale keywords.
-ck Name of category, followed by names and values of locale
keywords.
Following are the locale categories and the locale keywords that you can use in the name operand. Note that there are no keywords that you
can specify in the locale command for the LC_COLLATE and LC_CTYPE categories; the XCU specification allows vendors to determine whether the
locale command displays values for keywords in these two categories.
Locale Category Locale Keywords
LC_COLLATE None.
LC_CTYPE None.
CHARMAP
charmap
code_set_name
mb_cur_max
mb_cur_min
LC_MESSAGES
yesexpr
noexpr
yesstr
nostr
LC_MONETARY
int_curr_symbol
currency_symbol
mon_decimal_point
mon_grouping
mon_thousands_sep
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
debit_sign
credit_sign
left_parenthesis
right_parenthesis
LC_NUMERIC
decimal_point
thousands_sep
grouping
LC_TIME
abday
abmon
alt_digits
am_pm
d_fmt
d_t_fmt
day
era
era_d_fmt
era_d_t_fmt
era_t_fmt
era_year
mon
t_fmt
t_fmt_ampm
EXIT STATUS
Success. An error occurred.
ERRORS
[Tru64 UNIX] To review locale diagnostic messages, enter the following command: % dspcat /usr/lib/nls/msg/en_US.ISO8859-1/locale.cat |
more
EXAMPLES
Assume that the LANG environment variable is set to fr_FR.ISO8859-1 and the LC_MONETARY environment variable to fr_CA.ISO8859-1. The fol-
lowing example shows the results when you enter the locale command without options: % locale LANG=fr_FR.ISO8859-1 LC_COL-
LATE="fr_FR.ISO8859-1" LC_CTYPE="fr_FR.ISO8859-1" LC_MONETARY="fr_CA.ISO8859-1" LC_NUMERIC="fr_FR.ISO8859-1" LC_TIME="fr_FR.ISO8859-1"
LC_MESSAGES="fr_FR.ISO8859-1" LC_ALL=
The LC_ALL variable, if set, overrides the values of other variables. For example, if LC_ALL is set to en_US.ISO8859-1, the setting
implies LC_COLLATE=en_US.ISO8859-1, even if the LC_COLLATE environment variable is set to another locale. The following commands
show two ways to retrieve the value of the decimal_point delimiter for the current locale: % locale -ck decimal_point LC_NUMERIC
decimal_point="." % locale decimal_point . In the following example, the locale command retrieves any keywords defined in the
CHARMAP, LC_CTYPE, and LC_COLLATE categories of the POSIX (C) locale: % locale -ck CHARMAP LC_CTYPE LC_COLLATE CHARMAP
charmap="ISO8859-1" code_set_name="ISO8859-1" mb_cur_max=1 mb_cur_min=1 LC_COLLATE LC_CTYPE alnum=0x0002 alpha=0x0001 blank=0x0004
cntrl=0x0008 digit=0x0010 graph=0x0020 lower=0x0040 print=0x0080 punct=0x0100 space=0x0200 upper=0x0400 xdigit=0x0800 The following
example shows a possible application of the locale and printf commands in a script to determine whether a user response is affirma-
tive:
if printf "%s
" "$response" | grep -Eq "'locale yesexpr'" then
<insert processing for affirmative response> else
<insert processing for response other than affirmative> fi
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables affect the behavior of the locale command: Provides a default value for the locale category variables
that are not set or null. If set, overrides the values of all locale variables, including LANG. Determines the locale for the interpreta-
tion of byte sequences as characters (single-byte or multibyte) in input operands and files. Determines the locale used to find the mes-
sage catalog for diagnostic messages and other text displayed by the command. Determines the location of message catalogs for processing
of LC_MESSAGES.
SEE ALSO
Commands: localedef(1), printf(1)
Functions: setlocale(3)
Files: locale(4)
Others: i18n_intro(5), l10n_intro(5), standards(5)
Writing Software for the International Market
locale(1)
