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International Language Environments Guide

What Is a Locale?

A key concept for application programs is that of a program's locale. The locale is an explicit model and definition of a native-language environment. The notion of a locale is explicitly defined and included in the library definitions of the ANSI C Language standard.

A locale consists of a number of categories for which there is country-dependent formatting or other specifications. A program's locale defines its codesets, date and time formatting conventions, monetary conventions, decimal formatting conventions, and collation (sort) order.

A locale can be composed of a base language, the country (territory) of use, and optional codeset. Codeset is usually assumed. For example, German is de, an abbreviation for Deutsch, while Swiss German is de_CH, CH being an abbreviation for Confederation Helvetica. This allows for specific differences by country, such as currency units notation.

More than one locale can be associated with a particular language, which allows for regional differences. For example, an English-speaking user in the United States can select the en_US locale (English for the United States), while an English-speaking user in Great Britain can select en_GB (English for Great Britain).

Generally the locale name is specified by the LANG environment variable. Locale categories are subordinate to LANG, but can be set separately, in which case they override LANG. If the LC_ALL operand is set, it overrides not only LANG, but all the separate locale categories as well.

The locale naming convention is:

language[_territory][.codeset] [@modifier]

where a two-letter language code is from ISO 639, a two-letter territory code is from ISO 3166, codeset is the name of the codeset that is being used in the locale, and modifier is the name of the characteristics that differentiate it from the locale without the modifier.

All Solaris product locales preserve the Portable Character Set characters with US-ASCII code values.

For more information on the Portable Character Set, refer to “X/Open CAE Specification: System Interface Definitions, Issue 5” (ISBN 1–85912–186–1).

A single locale can have more than one locale name. For example, POSIX is the same as C.

Full and Partial Locales

A full Solaris locale has all of the listed functions and the localized system messages in the relevant language. Partial locales have no localized messages installed. All locales in the Solaris environment are capable of displaying localized messages, provided that localized messages for the relevant language are installed. For example, the following locales can be either partial or full locales:

When the German message translations are installed using the Language CD, all of the above locales become full locales because they have access to a fully translated desktop. The language CD contains message translations for the following languages and locales:

All partial locales are available on the Software CD. Message translations are available on the Languages CD.

All English locales are also full locales and are available on the Software CD.

Behavior Affected by Locales

Different cultures often use different conventions for writing the date and time, formatting numbers, delimiting words and phrases, and quoting material. Throughout the system, a locale determines the behavior of the following items:

The Solaris environment separates language and culture-dependent information from the application and saves it outside the application. Doing so eliminates the need to translate, rewrite, or recompile the application for each market. The only requirement to enter a new market is to localize the external information to the local language and customs.

Locale Categories

The locale categories are as follows:

LC_CTYPE

Controls the behavior of character handling functions.

LC_TIME

Specifies date and time formats, including month names, days of the week, and common full and abbreviated representations.

LC_MONETARY

Specifies monetary formats, including currency symbol for the locale, thousands separator, sign position, the number of fractional digits, and so forth.

LC_NUMERIC

Specifies the decimal delimiter (or radix character), the thousands separator, and the grouping.

LC_COLLATE

Specifies a collation order, and regular expression definition for the locale.

LC_MESSAGES

Specifies the language in which the localized messages are written, affirmative and negative responses of the locale (yes and no strings and expressions).

LO_LTYPE

Specifies the layout engine that provides information about language rendering. Language rendering (or text rendering) consists of text shaping and directionality.