locale — Get locale-specific information

Format

locale [–a|–m]locale [–ck] name …

Description

locale displays information about the current locale and all locales accessible to the current application. locale searches directory /usr/lib/nls/locale for all the compiled locales.

Invoking locale with no options or operands displays the values of the LANG and LC_* environment variables. If a LC_* variable is not set or is overridden by LC_ALL, locale displays its implied value in double quotes.

The operand name can be a category name, keyword name, or the reserved name charmap. If it is a category name, locale selects the given category and all keywords within it for output. If name is a keyword name, locale selects the given keyword and its category for output. If name is charmap, locale displays the name of the charmap used with the localedef –f option when the locale was created.

Options

–a: Displays information about all accessible locales including POSIX and the POSIX locale.
Note: Some of the accessible locales that are displayed will only work in specific environments. For example, the XPLINK locales will not work in the z/OS® shell environment. When using this information to specify a locale, the convention is to use the descriptive locale name. See the section on locale naming conventions in z/OS XL C/C++ Programming Guide.
–c: Displays the names of selected categories.
–k: Displays the names of selected keywords. If you do not specify the –k option, locale displays the values of selected keywords but not their names. With –k, strings are written in an unambiguous form using the escape character from the current locale.
–m: Displays a list of all available character maps.

The following list contains valid locale keywords:

abday: Abbreviated day names
abmon: Abbreviated month names
alpha: All alphabetic characters (upper and lower case)
am_pm: A.m. and p.m. string
backslash: Encoding of \
blank: How a blank is represented
character-collation: The collating sequence
charmap: Mapping of character symbols to actual character encodings
circumflex: Encoding of ^
cntrl: Control characters
codeset: Same as code_set_name
code_set_name: Name of the coded character set used
commercial_at: Encoding of @
currency_symbol: Local currency symbol of the current locale
d_fmt: Date format
d_t_fmt: Date and time format
day: Full day names
decimal_point: Decimal-point characters
digit: All numeric characters
dollar_sign: Encoding of $
daylight_name: The name of the daylight saving time zone (DST). The value will be overwritten if it is different from the keyword setting defined by the TZ environment variable.
end_day: Day of the week when daylight saving time (DST) ends. The value will be overwritten if it is different from the keyword setting defined by the TZ environment variable.
end_month: Week of the month when daylight saving time (DST) ends. The value will be overwritten if it is different from the keyword setting defined by the TZ environment variable.
end_time: Number of seconds after midnight when daylight saving time (DST) ends. The value will be overwritten if it is different from the keyword setting defined by the TZ environment variable.
end_week: Month of the year when daylight saving time (DST) ends. The value will be overwritten if it is different from the keyword setting defined by the TZ environment variable.
exclamation_mark: Encoding of !
frac_digits: Number of digits to the right of the decimal place in monetary quantities
graph: Graphic characters
grave_accent: Encoding of `
grouping: String indicating the size of each group of digits in formatted nonmonetary quantities
int_curr_symbol: International currency symbol for the current locale
int_frac_digits: The number of displayed digits to the right of the decimal place for internationally formatted monetary quantities
left_brace: Encoding of {
left_bracket: Encoding of [
lower: Lowercase alphabet
mb_cur_max: Maximum number of bytes used to represent a character
mon: Full month names
mon_decimal_point: Decimal-point character used to format monetary quantities
mon_grouping: String indicating the size of each group of digits in formatted monetary quantities
mon_thousands_sep: Separator for digits in formatted monetary quantities
n_cs_precedes: 1 if the currency_symbol precedes the value for a negative formatted monetary quantity; 0 if it does not
n_sep_by_space: 1 if the currency_symbol is separated by a space from the value of a negative formatted monetary quantity; 0 if it does not; 2 if a space separates the symbol and the sign string–if adjacent
n_sign_posn: Value indicating the position of the negative_sign for a negative formatted monetary quantity
negative_sign: String indicating the negative sign used in monetary quantities
noexpr: Expression for negative
number_sign: Encoding of #
p_cs_precedes: 1 if the currency_symbol precedes the value for a nonnegative formatted monetary quantity; 0 if it does not
p_sep_by_space: 1 if the currency_symbol is separated by a space from the value of a nonnegative formatted monetary quantity; 0 if it does not; 2 if a space separates the symbol and the string–if adjacent
p_sign_posn: Value indicating the position of the positive_sign for a nonnegative formatted monetary quantity
positive_sign: String indicating the positive sign used in monetary quantities
print: Printable characters
punct: Punctuation characters
right_brace: Encoding of }
right_bracket: Encoding of ]
shift: DST time shift in seconds. The value will be overwritten if it is different from the keyword setting defined by the TZ environment variable.
space: How white space is represented
start_day: Day of the week when daylight saving time (DST) starts. The value will be overwritten if it is different from the keyword setting defined by the TZ environment variable.
start_month: Month of the year when daylight saving time (DST) starts. The value ranges from 1 through 12. The value will be overwritten if it is different from the keyword setting defined by the TZ environment variable.
start_time: Number of seconds after midnight when daylight saving time (DST) starts. The value will be overwritten if it is different from the keyword setting defined by the TZ environment variable.
start_week: Week of the month when daylight saving time (DST) starts. The value will be overwritten if it is different from the keyword setting defined by the TZ environment variable.
t_fmt: Time format
t_fmt_ampm: Long date format
tilde: Encoding of ~
timezone_difference: Time zone difference in minutes. The value will be overwritten if it is different from the keyword setting defined by the TZ environment variable.
timezone_name: Time zone name. The value will be overwritten if it is different from the keyword setting defined by the TZ environment variable.
tolower: Uppercase to lowercase conversion
thousands_sep: Character used to separate groups of digits to the left of the decimal-point character in formatted nonmonetary quantities
toupper: Lowercase to uppercase conversion
uctname: Coordinated Universal Time. The value will be overwritten if it is different from the keyword setting may be overridden if TZ is set.
upper: Uppercase alphabet
vertical_line: Encoding of |
xdigit: Hexadecimal digits
yesexpr: Expression for affirmative

Examples

In the following examples, let's assume that locale environment variables are set as follows:

LANG=locale_x
LC_COLLATE=locale_y

The command:

locale

produces 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_SYNTAX="locale_x"
LC_TOD="locale_x"
LC_MESSAGES="locale_x"
LC_ALL=

The command:

LC_ALL=POSIX locale -ck decimal_point

produces:

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
        nonaffirmative processing goes here
fi

Environment variables

locale uses the following environment variable:

TZ: Contains the time zone to be used when displaying date and time strings.

Localization

locale uses the following localization environment variables:

LANG
LC_ALL
LC_CTYPE
LC_MESSAGES
LC_SYNTAX
NLSPATH

See Localization for more information.

Exit values

0: Successful completion
1: An error occurred
2: A usage message was printed

Portability

POSIX.2, UNIX System V.

Related information

localedef