Man1 - locale.1

locale - get locale-specific information

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

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:

-a, –all-locales

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

-m, –charmaps

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:

-c, –category-name

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.

-k, –keyword-name

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:

-v, –verbose

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.

-V, –version

Display the program version and exit.

/usr/lib/locale/locale-archive

Usual default locale archive location.

/usr/share/i18n/locales

Usual default path for locale definition files.

POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008.

  $ 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

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

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