LOCALE(7)		   Linux Programmers Manual		    LOCALE(7)



NAME
       locale - Description of multi-language support

SYNOPSIS
       #include 

DESCRIPTION
       A  locale is a set of language and cultural rules.  These cover aspects
       such as language for messages, different character sets,  lexicographic
       conventions,  etc.   A program needs to be able to determine its locale
       and act accordingly to be portable to different cultures.

       The header  declares data types, functions and  macros  which
       are useful in this task.

       The  functions  it declares are setlocale(3) to set the current locale,
       and localeconv(3) to get information about number formatting.

       There are different categories for local information  a	program  might
       need; they are declared as macros.  Using them as the first argument to
       the setlocale(3) function, it is possible to set one of	these  to  the
       desired locale:

       LC_COLLATE
	      This  is used to change the behavior of the functions strcoll(3)
	      and strxfrm(3), which are used to compare strings in  the  local
	      alphabet.  For example, the German sharp s is sorted as "ss".

       LC_CTYPE
	      This  changes the behavior of the character handling and classi
	      fication functions, such as isupper(3) and toupper(3),  and  the
	      multi-byte character functions such as mblen(3) or wctomb(3).

       LC_MONETARY
	      changes	the   information   returned  by  localeconv(3)  which
	      describes the way numbers are usually printed, with details such
	      as  decimal  point  versus  decimal  comma.  This information is
	      internally used by the function strfmon(3).

       LC_MESSAGES
	      changes the language messages  are  displayed  in  and  what  an
	      affirmative  or  negative  answer looks like.  The GNU C-library
	      contains the gettext(3), ngettext(3), and  rpmatch(3)  functions
	      to ease the use of these information.  The GNU gettext family of
	      functions also obey the environment variable LANGUAGE.

       LC_NUMERIC
	      changes the information used by the printf(3) and scanf(3)  fam
	      ily  of  functions, when they are advised to use the locale-set
	      tings.  This information can also be read with the localeconv(3)
	      function.

       LC_TIME
	      changes  the behavior of the strftime(3) function to display the
	      current time in a locally acceptable form; for example, most  of
	      Europe uses a 24-hour clock versus the 12-hour clock used in the
	      United States.

       LC_ALL All of the above.

       If the second argument to setlocale(3) is empty	string,  "",  for  the
       default locale, it is determined using the following steps:

       1.     If there is a non-null environment variable LC_ALL, the value of
	      LC_ALL is used.

       2.     If an environment variable with the same name as one of the cat
	      egories above exists and is non-null, its value is used for that
	      category.

       3.     If there is a non-null environment variable LANG, the  value  of
	      LANG is used.

       Values  about  local  numeric  formatting is made available in a struct
       lconv returned by the localeconv(3) function, which has	the  following
       declaration:

	 struct lconv {

	     /* Numeric (non-monetary) information */

	     char *decimal_point;     /* Radix character */
	     char *thousands_sep;     /* Separator for digit groups to left
					 of radix character */
	     char *grouping; /* Each element is the number of digits in a
				group; elements with higher indices are
				further left.  An element with value CHAR_MAX
				means that no further grouping is done.  An
				element with value 0 means that the previous
				element is used for all groups further left. */

	     /* Remaining fields are for monetary information */

	     char *int_curr_symbol;   /* First three chars are a currency symbol
					 from ISO 4217.  Fourth char is the
					 separator.  Fifth char is '\0'. */
	     char *currency_symbol;   /* Local currency symbol */
	     char *mon_decimal_point; /* Radix character */
	     char *mon_thousands_sep; /* Like thousands_sep above */
	     char *mon_grouping;      /* Like grouping above */
	     char *positive_sign;     /* Sign for positive values */
	     char *negative_sign;     /* Sign for negative values */
	     char  int_frac_digits;   /* International fractional digits */
	     char  frac_digits;       /* Local fractional digits */
	     char  p_cs_precedes;     /* 1 if currency_symbol precedes a
					 positive value, 0 if succeeds */
	     char  p_sep_by_space;    /* 1 if a space separates currency_symbol
					 from a positive value */
	     char  n_cs_precedes;     /* 1 if currency_symbol precedes a
					 negative value, 0 if succeeds */
	     char  n_sep_by_space;    /* 1 if a space separates currency_symbol
					 from a negative value */
	     /* Positive and negative sign positions:
		0 Parentheses surround the quantity and currency_symbol.
		1 The sign string precedes the quantity and currency_symbol.
		2 The sign string succeeds the quantity and currency_symbol.
		3 The sign string immediately precedes the currency_symbol.
		4 The sign string immediately succeeds the currency_symbol. */
	     char  p_sign_posn;
	     char  n_sign_posn;
	 };

CONFORMING TO
       POSIX.1-2001.

       The GNU gettext functions are specified in LI18NUX2000.

SEE ALSO
       locale(1),   localedef(1),   gettext(3),   localeconv(3),  ngettext(3),
       nl_langinfo(3),	rpmatch(3),  setlocale(3),   strcoll(3),   strfmon(3),
       strftime(3), strxfrm(3)

COLOPHON
       This  page  is  part of release 3.05 of the Linux man-pages project.  A
       description of the project, and information about reporting  bugs,  can
       be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.



Linux				  1993-04-24			     LOCALE(7)