Setting the Locale

Three components make up the Simplified Chinese Solaris localization facility:

• Localization interface--User-level shell environment variables set the current working locale for each category. The application-level setlocale() function sets the locale for each category.

• Localization objects--These objects hold information suitable for functions that are specific to a locale.

• Localization support features--These features include appropriate supporting commands and functions as well as facilities for creation, addition, and maintenance of localization objects.

The Simplified Chinese Solaris 8 operating environment defines six categories to describe the local environment. These categories allow the localization of character typing and conversion functions, date and time, numeric representation, monetary format, collation order, and program messages. Each category can have multiple localizations. For example, date and time can be displayed in C locale format or Simplified Chinese. Applications can switch between locale settings by using the setlocale() function.

Users can change their locale settings with shell environment variables. Each category names an existing locale. The setlocale function directly sets or queries the setting of these categories. Internationalized functions use these settings to access the appropriate tables for the desired locale.

Environment variables can be used to set the categories indirectly: when setlocale() sets the categories to the default setting for that application, it uses the setting of each environment variable to set the associated categories. The setlocale() function used in this way does not change the settings of environment variables, it only reads their settings.