locale(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | FILES | STANDARDS | HISTORY | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

locale(1)                General Commands Manual               locale(1)

NAME         top

       locale - get locale-specific information

SYNOPSIS         top

       locale [option]
       locale [option] -a
       locale [option] -m
       locale [option] name...

DESCRIPTION         top

       The locale command displays information about the current locale,
       or all locales, on standard output.

       When invoked without arguments, locale displays the current
       locale settings for each locale category (see locale(5)), based
       on the settings of the environment variables that control the
       locale (see locale(7)).  Values for variables set in the
       environment are printed without double quotes, implied values are
       printed with double quotes.

       If either the -a or the -m option (or one of their long-format
       equivalents) is specified, the behavior is as follows:

       --all-locales
       -a     Display a list of all available locales.  The -v option
              causes the LC_IDENTIFICATION metadata about each locale to
              be included in the output.

       --charmaps
       -m     Display the available charmaps (character set description
              files).  To display the current character set for the
              locale, use locale -c charmap.

       The locale command can also be provided with one or more
       arguments, which are the names of locale keywords (for example,
       date_fmt, ctype-class-names, yesexpr, or decimal_point) or locale
       categories (for example, LC_CTYPE or LC_TIME).  For each
       argument, the following is displayed:

       •  For a locale keyword, the value of that keyword to be
          displayed.

       •  For a locale category, the values of all keywords in that
          category are displayed.

       When arguments are supplied, the following options are
       meaningful:

       --category-name
       -c     For a category name argument, write the name of the locale
              category on a separate line preceding the list of keyword
              values for that category.

              For a keyword name argument, write the name of the locale
              category for this keyword on a separate line preceding the
              keyword value.

              This option improves readability when multiple name
              arguments are specified.  It can be combined with the -k
              option.

       --keyword-name
       -k     For each keyword whose value is being displayed, include
              also the name of that keyword, so that the output has the
              format:

                  keyword="value"

       The locale command also knows about the following options:

       --verbose
       -v     Display additional information for some command-line
              option and argument combinations.

       --help
       -?     Display a summary of command-line options and arguments
              and exit.

       --usage
              Display a short usage message and exit.

       --version
       -V     Display the program version and exit.

FILES         top

       /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive
              Usual default locale archive location.

       /usr/share/i18n/locales
              Usual default path for locale definition files.

STANDARDS         top

       POSIX.1-2008.

HISTORY         top

       POSIX.1-2001.

EXAMPLES         top

       $ locale
       LANG=en_US.UTF-8
       LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
       LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
       LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
       LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
       LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
       LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
       LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
       LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
       LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
       LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
       LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
       LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
       LC_ALL=

       $ locale date_fmt
       %a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Z %Y

       $ locale -k date_fmt
       date_fmt="%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Z %Y"

       $ locale -ck date_fmt
       LC_TIME
       date_fmt="%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Z %Y"

       $ locale LC_TELEPHONE
       +%c (%a) %l
       (%a) %l
       11
       1
       UTF-8

       $ locale -k LC_TELEPHONE
       tel_int_fmt="+%c (%a) %l"
       tel_dom_fmt="(%a) %l"
       int_select="11"
       int_prefix="1"
       telephone-codeset="UTF-8"

       The following example compiles a custom locale from the ./wrk
       directory with the localedef(1) utility under the $HOME/.locale
       directory, then tests the result with the date(1) command, and
       then sets the environment variables LOCPATH and LANG in the shell
       profile file so that the custom locale will be used in the
       subsequent user sessions:

       $ mkdir -p $HOME/.locale
       $ I18NPATH=./wrk/ localedef -f UTF-8 -i fi_SE $HOME/.locale/fi_SE.UTF-8
       $ LOCPATH=$HOME/.locale LC_ALL=fi_SE.UTF-8 date
       $ echo "export LOCPATH=\$HOME/.locale" >> $HOME/.bashrc
       $ echo "export LANG=fi_SE.UTF-8" >> $HOME/.bashrc

SEE ALSO         top

       localedef(1), charmap(5), locale(5), locale(7)

COLOPHON         top

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Linux man-pages 6.9.1          2024-06-15                      locale(1)

Pages that refer to this page: iconv(1)localedef(1)localeconv(3)newlocale(3)nl_langinfo(3)setlocale(3)sysconf(3)uselocale(3)charmap(5)locale(5)repertoiremap(5)locale(7)unicode(7)utf-8(7)