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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: POSIX.1, XPG4 Refer to the standards(5) reference page for more information about industry standards and associated tags.

OPTIONS

-a Writes information about all available public locales. -c Writes the names of the specified locale categories. -k Writes the names and values of specified locale keywords. -m Writes the names of all character map (charmap) files that are available for specification to the -f option of the localedef command.

OPERANDS

name... 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 keyword 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; X/Open 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

0 (zero) Success. >0 An error occurred.

ERRORS

To review locale diagnostic messages, enter the following command: % dspcat /usr/lib/nls/msg/en_US.ISO8859-1/locale.cat | more

EXAMPLES

1. 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 following example shows the results when you enter the locale command without options: % locale LANG=fr_FR.ISO8859-1 LC_COLLATE="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. 2. 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 . 3. 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 4. The following example shows a possible application of the locale and printf commands in a script to determine whether a user response is affirmative: if printf "%s\n" "$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: LANG Provides a default value for the locale category variables that are not set or null. LC_ALL If set, overrides the values of all locale variables, including LANG. LC_CTYPE Determines the locale for the interpretation of byte sequences as characters (single-byte or multibyte) in input operands and files. LC_MESSAGES Determines the locale used to find the message catalog for diagnostic messages and other text displayed by the command. NLSPATH 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