Provided by: manpages-posix_2013a-1_all bug

PROLOG

       This  manual  page  is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The Linux implementation of
       this interface may differ (consult the corresponding Linux  manual  page  for  details  of
       Linux behavior), or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME

       locale — get locale-specific information

SYNOPSIS

       locale [−a|−m]

       locale [−ck] name...

DESCRIPTION

       The  locale  utility  shall write information about the current locale environment, or all
       public locales, to the standard output. For the purposes of this section, a public  locale
       is one provided by the implementation that is accessible to the application.

       When  locale  is  invoked  without  any  arguments,  it shall summarize the current locale
       environment for each locale category as determined by  the  settings  of  the  environment
       variables defined in the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter 7, Locale.

       When  invoked with operands, it shall write values that have been assigned to the keywords
       in the locale categories, as follows:

        *  Specifying a keyword name shall select the named keyword and the  category  containing
           that keyword.

        *  Specifying  a  category  name shall select the named category and all keywords in that
           category.

OPTIONS

       The locale utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of  POSIX.1‐2008,  Section
       12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines.

       The following options shall be supported:

       −a        Write  information  about  all  available  public locales. The available locales
                 shall include POSIX, representing the POSIX locale.  The  manner  in  which  the
                 implementation  determines  what  other locales are available is implementation-
                 defined.

       −c        Write the names of selected locale categories; see the STDOUT section.   The  −c
                 option  increases  readability  when  more  than  one  category is selected (for
                 example, via more than one keyword name or via a category name).   It  is  valid
                 both with and without the −k option.

       −k        Write  the  names  and  values of selected keywords. The implementation may omit
                 values for some keywords; see the OPERANDS section.

       −m        Write  names  of  available  charmaps;  see  the  Base  Definitions  volume   of
                 POSIX.1‐2008, Section 6.1, Portable Character Set.

OPERANDS

       The following operand shall be supported:

       name      The  name  of  a  locale  category  as defined in the Base Definitions volume of
                 POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter 7, Locale, the name of a keyword in a locale category,  or
                 the  reserved name charmap.  The named category or keyword shall be selected for
                 output. If a single name represents both a locale category name  and  a  keyword
                 name  in  the  current  locale,  the  results  are  unspecified. Otherwise, both
                 category and keyword names can be specified as name operands, in  any  sequence.
                 It  is  implementation-defined  whether  any  keyword values are written for the
                 categories LC_CTYPE and LC_COLLATE.

STDIN

       Not used.

INPUT FILES

       None.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

       The following environment variables shall affect the execution of locale:

       LANG      Provide a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or
                 null.   (See   the   Base  Definitions  volume  of  POSIX.1‐2008,  Section  8.2,
                 Internationalization  Variables  for  the  precedence  of   internationalization
                 variables used to determine the values of locale categories.)

       LC_ALL    If  set  to  a  non-empty  string  value,  override  the values of all the other
                 internationalization variables.

       LC_CTYPE  Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of  text  data
                 as  characters  (for example, single-byte as opposed to multi-byte characters in
                 arguments and input files).

       LC_MESSAGES
                 Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format  and  contents  of
                 diagnostic messages written to standard error.

       NLSPATH   Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing of LC_MESSAGES.

       The  application  shall  ensure  that  the  LANG,  LC_*, and NLSPATH environment variables
       specify the current locale environment to be written out; they shall be  used  if  the  −a
       option is not specified.

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS

       Default.

STDOUT

       The LANG variable shall be written first using the format:

           "LANG=%s\n", <value>

       If LANG is not set or is an empty string, the value is the empty string.

       If  locale  is  invoked  without any options or operands, the names and values of the LC_*
       environment variables described in this volume of POSIX.1‐2008 shall  be  written  to  the
       standard  output,  one  variable  per line, and each line using the following format. Only
       those variables set in the environment and not overridden by LC_ALL shall be written using
       this format:

           "%s=%s\n", <variable_name>, <value>

       The names of those LC_* variables associated with locale categories defined in this volume
       of POSIX.1‐2008 that are not set in the environment or are overridden by LC_ALL  shall  be
       written in the following format:

           "%s=\"%s\"\n", <variable_name>, <implied value>

       The  <implied value>  shall  be  the  name  of  the locale that has been selected for that
       category by the implementation, based on the values in LANG and LC_ALL,  as  described  in
       the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter 8, Environment Variables.

       The  <value>  and  <implied value> shown above shall be properly quoted for possible later
       reentry to the shell. The <value> shall not be quoted using double-quotes (so that it  can
       be  distinguished by the user from the <implied value> case, which always requires double-
       quotes).

       The LC_ALL variable shall be written last, using the first format shown above.  If  it  is
       not set, it shall be written as:

           "LC_ALL=\n"

       If any arguments are specified:

        1. If  the  −a option is specified, the names of all the public locales shall be written,
           each in the following format:

               "%s\n", <locale name>

        2. If the −c option is specified, the names of all selected categories shall be  written,
           each in the following format:

               "%s\n", <category name>

           If  keywords  are  also  selected for writing (see following items), the category name
           output shall precede the keyword output for that category.

           If the −c option is not specified, the names of the categories shall not  be  written;
           only the keywords, as selected by the <name> operand, shall be written.

        3. If  the  −k  option  is  specified, the names and values of selected keywords shall be
           written. If a value is non-numeric and is not a compound keyword value,  it  shall  be
           written in the following format:

               "%s=\"%s\"\n", <keyword name>, <keyword value>

           If  a value is a non-numeric compound keyword value, it shall either be written in the
           format:

               "%s=\"%s\"\n", <keyword name>, <keyword value>

           where the <keyword value> is a  single  string  of  values  separated  by  <semicolon>
           characters, or it shall be written in the format:

               "%s=%s\n", <keyword name>, <keyword value>

           where  the  <keyword  value>  is encoded as a set of strings, each enclosed in double-
           quotation-marks, separated by <semicolon> characters.

           If the keyword was charmap, the name of the charmap (if any) that  was  specified  via
           the  localedef  −f  option when the locale was created shall be written, with the word
           charmap as <keyword name>.

           If a value is numeric, it shall be written in one of the following formats:

               "%s=%d\n", <keyword name>, <keyword value>

               "%s=%c%o\n", <keyword name>, <escape character>, <keyword value>

               "%s=%cx%x\n", <keyword name>, <escape character>, <keyword value>

           where the <escape character> is that identified by  the  escape_char  keyword  in  the
           current  locale;  see the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 7.3, Locale
           Definition.

           Compound keyword values (list entries) shall be separated in the output by <semicolon>
           characters.  When  included  in  keyword values, the <semicolon>, <backslash>, double-
           quote, and  any  control  character  shall  be  preceded  (escaped)  with  the  escape
           character.

        4. If  the  −k option is not specified, selected keyword values shall be written, each in
           the following format:

               "%s\n", <keyword value>

           If the keyword was charmap, the name of the charmap (if any) that  was  specified  via
           the localedef −f option when the locale was created shall be written.

        5. If the −m option is specified, then a list of all available charmaps shall be written,
           each in the format:

               "%s\n", <charmap>

           where <charmap> is in a  format  suitable  for  use  as  the  option-argument  to  the
           localedef −f option.

STDERR

       The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

OUTPUT FILES

       None.

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION

       None.

EXIT STATUS

       The following exit values shall be returned:

        0    All the requested information was found and output successfully.

       >0    An error occurred.

CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS

       Default.

       The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE

       If  the  LANG environment variable is not set or set to an empty value, or one of the LC_*
       environment variables is set to an unrecognized value, the actual locales assumed (if any)
       are  implementation-defined  as  described in the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008,
       Chapter 8, Environment Variables.

       Implementations are not required to write out  the  actual  values  for  keywords  in  the
       categories  LC_CTYPE and LC_COLLATE; however, they must write out the categories (allowing
       an application to determine, for example, which character classes are available).

EXAMPLES

       In the following examples, the assumption is that locale environment variables are set  as
       follows:

           LANG=locale_x
           LC_COLLATE=locale_y

       The command locale would result in 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_MESSAGES="locale_x"
           LC_ALL=

       The  order  of  presentation  of  the  categories  is  not  specified  by  this  volume of
       POSIX.1‐2008.

       The command:

           LC_ALL=POSIX locale −ck decimal_point

       would produce:

           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
               non-affirmative processing goes here
           fi

RATIONALE

       The  output  for  categories  LC_CTYPE and LC_COLLATE has been made implementation-defined
       because there is a questionable value in having a shell script receive an entire array  of
       characters.   It  is  also  difficult  to return a logical collation description, short of
       returning a complete localedef source.

       The −m option was included to allow applications to query for the existence  of  charmaps.
       The  output  is a list of the charmaps (implementation-supplied and user-supplied, if any)
       on the system.

       The −c option was included for readability when more than one category  is  selected  (for
       example, via more than one keyword name or via a category name). It is valid both with and
       without the −k option.

       The charmap keyword, which returns the name of the charmap (if any) that was used when the
       current  locale was created, was included to allow applications needing the information to
       retrieve it.

       According to the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 6.1, Portable  Character
       Set,  the  standard  requires  that  all supported locales must have the same encoding for
       <period> and <slash>, because these two characters are used within the  locale-independent
       pathname  resolution  sequence.  Therefore,  it would be an error if locale −a listed both
       ASCII and  EBCDIC-based  locales,  since  those  two  encodings  do  not  share  the  same
       representation for either <period> or <slash>.  Any system that supports both environments
       would be expected to provide two POSIX locales, one in  either  codeset,  where  only  the
       locales  appropriate  to  the  current  environment  can  be visible at a time. In an XSI-
       compliant implementation, the dd  utility  is  the  only  portable  means  for  performing
       conversions between the two character sets.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

       None.

SEE ALSO

       localedef

       The  Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 6.1, Portable Character Set, Chapter
       7, Locale, Chapter 8, Environment Variables, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines

COPYRIGHT

       Portions of this text are reprinted and  reproduced  in  electronic  form  from  IEEE  Std
       1003.1,  2013  Edition,  Standard  for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System
       Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013  by  the
       Institute  of  Electrical  and  Electronics  Engineers,  Inc and The Open Group.  (This is
       POSIX.1-2008 with the  2013  Technical  Corrigendum  1  applied.)  In  the  event  of  any
       discrepancy  between  this  version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the
       original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The  original  Standard
       can be obtained online at http://www.unix.org/online.html .

       Any  typographical  or  formatting errors that appear in this page are most likely to have
       been introduced during the conversion of the source files to man page  format.  To  report
       such errors, see https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .