LOCALE(1P) POSIX Programmer's Manual LOCALE(1P)
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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.
NAME
locale -- get locale-specific information
SYNOPSIS
locale [-a|-m]
locale [-ck] name...
DESCRIPTION
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 imple-
mentation 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 Defini-
tions 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.
OPTIONS
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 key-
word 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 imple-
mentation 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.
OPERANDS
The following operand shall be supported:
name The name of a locale category as defined in the Base Defini-
tions 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 unspeci-
fied. Otherwise, both category and keyword names can be spec-
ified as name operands, in any sequence. It is implementa-
tion-defined whether any keyword values are written for the
categories LC_CTYPE and LC_COLLATE.
STDIN
Not used.
INPUT FILES
None.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of
locale:
LANG Provide a default value for the internationalization vari-
ables that are unset or null. (See the Base Definitions vol-
ume of POSIX.1-2008, Section 8.2, Internationalization Vari-
ables 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 environ-
ment variables specify the current locale environment to be written
out; they shall be used if the -a option is not specified.
ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
Default.
STDOUT
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 environ-
ment or are overridden by LC_ALL shall be written in the following for-
mat:
"%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 for-
mat:
"%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> char-
acters.
If the keyword was charmap, the name of the charmap (if any) that
was specified via the localedef -f option when the locale was cre-
ated 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 charac-
ter 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 cre-
ated 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-argu-
ment to the localedef -f option.
STDERR
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.
OUTPUT FILES
None.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
None.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values shall be returned:
0 All the requested information was found and output successfully.
>0 An error occurred.
CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
Default.
The following sections are informative.
APPLICATION USAGE
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).
EXAMPLES
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
RATIONALE
The output for categories LC_CTYPE and LC_COLLATE has been made imple-
mentation-defined because there is a questionable value in having a
shell script receive an entire array of characters. It is also diffi-
cult 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 exis-
tence of charmaps. The output is a list of the charmaps (implementa-
tion-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 cate-
gory 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 appro-
priate 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.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.
SEE ALSO
localedef
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
COPYRIGHT
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 Electri-
cal 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.ker-
nel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
IEEE/The Open Group 2013 LOCALE(1P)
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