locale(1)locale(1)NAMElocale - Displays information about locales
SYNOPSISlocale [-a | -m]
locale [-c] [-k] name...
STANDARDS
Interfaces documented on this reference page conform to industry stan‐
dards 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 pro‐
duce the current locale
Different types of names can be intermixed in any order. How‐
ever, 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 vari‐
ables, 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 val‐
ues 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 key‐
words.
-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 cate‐
gories; 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 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_MES‐
SAGES="fr_FR.ISO8859-1" LC_ALL=
The LC_ALL variable, if set, overrides the values of other vari‐
ables. 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_COL‐
LATE environment variable is set to another locale. The follow‐
ing commands show two ways to retrieve the value of the deci‐
mal_point delimiter for the current locale: % locale-ck deci‐
mal_point LC_NUMERIC decimal_point="." % locale decimal_point .
In the following example, the locale command retrieves any key‐
words defined in the CHARMAP, LC_CTYPE, and LC_COLLATE cate‐
gories 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 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: 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)