locale(C)

locale -- get locale-specific information

Syntax

locale [ -a | -m ]

locale [ -ck ] name ...

Description

locale either displays information about the current locale environment or displays information about all locales. A locale defines your environment in terms of language and cultural conventions. It consists of one or more categories corresponding to these environment variable names:

LC_ALL: If set and exported, this variable specifies the setting of all locale categories.
LC_COLLATE: Collation order used by commands such as sort(C) and uniq(C).
LC_CTYPE: Character classification and case conversion.
LC_MESSAGES: Formats of informative and diagnostic messages and interactive responses.
LC_MONETARY: Monetary formatting.
LC_NUMERIC: Numeric, non-monetary formatting.
LC_TIME: Date and time formats.
LANG: The default locale of the current environment. Aspects of this locale may be overridden by the individual settings of the LC_ variables.

When locale is invoked without arguments, it lists the values of all of the variables.

locale takes the following options:

-a: Display information about all public locales.
-m: Display the names of available charmaps.
-c: Display the names of selected categories.
-k: Display the names and values of selected keywords.

name is the name of a locale category or of a keyword within a locale category. If name is the reserved word charmap, locale prints the name of the charmap (if any) that was specified when the locale was created (using localedef -f).

Exit values

locale returns 0 on success and a value greater than 0 if an error occurred.

Examples

If locale is invoked without any options, it displays the names and values of LANG and the locale category variables. The value of LC_ALL overrides all internationalization variables including LANG. The values of the locale category variables (LC_) are displayed as set in the environment unless they are overridden by the setting of the LC_ALL variable. If LANG is set to ``en_GB.ISO8859-1'' and LC_ALL is not set, locale with no options will produce the following output:

   LANG=en_GB.ISO8859-1
   LC_CTYPE="en_GB.ISO8859-1"
   LC_COLLATE="en_GB.ISO8859-1"
   LC_TIME="en_GB.ISO8859-1"
   LC_NUMERIC="en_GB.ISO8859-1"
   LC_MONETARY="en_GB.ISO8859-1"
   LC_MESSAGES="en_GB.ISO8859-1"
   LC_ALL=

If LC_ALL is set to another value, this overrides all the category variables (LC_); LANG is not altered. An individual category can also be assigned a separate value.

locale -c LC_NUMERIC produces output such as:

   LC_NUMERIC
   en_GB.ISO8859-1
   LC_NUMERIC
   .
   LC_NUMERIC
   ,
   LC_NUMERIC

locale -ck LC_NUMERIC additionally lists keywords within the selected category:

   LC_NUMERIC
   LC_NUMERIC="en_GB.ISO8859-1"
   LC_NUMERIC
   decimal_point="."
   LC_NUMERIC
   thousands_sep=","
   LC_NUMERIC
   grouping=""

If you want to view the value of a specific keyword, specify its name. For example, locale -ck decimal_point might produce the output:

   LC_NUMERIC
   decimal_point="."

Simply entering locale -k decimal_point results in the output:

   decimal_point="."

Standards conformance

locale is conformant with: