ls /usr/lib/nls
+ ls /usr/share/locale
+
and see whether they list something resembling these
en_US.ISO8859-1 de_DE.ISO8859-1 ru_RU.ISO8859-5
english.iso88591 german.iso88591 russian.iso88595
english.roman8 russian.koi8r
-Sadly, even though the calling interface for setlocale() has
-been standardized, names of locales and the directories where the
+Sadly, even though the calling interface for setlocale() has been
+standardized, names of locales and the directories where the
configuration resides have not been. The basic form of the name is
-I<language_country/territory>B<.>I<codeset>, but the latter parts after
-I<language> are not always present. The I<language> and I<country> are
-usually from the standards B<ISO 3166> and B<ISO 639>, the two-letter
-abbreviations for the countries and the languages of the world,
-respectively. The I<codeset> part often mentions some B<ISO 8859>
-character set, the Latin codesets. For example, C<ISO 8859-1> is the
-so-called "Western codeset" that can be used to encode most Western
-European languages. Again, there are several ways to write even the
-name of that one standard. Lamentably.
+I<language_territory>B<.>I<codeset>, but the latter parts after
+I<language> are not always present. The I<language> and I<country>
+are usually from the standards B<ISO 3166> and B<ISO 639>, the
+two-letter abbreviations for the countries and the languages of the
+world, respectively. The I<codeset> part often mentions some B<ISO
+8859> character set, the Latin codesets. For example, C<ISO 8859-1>
+is the so-called "Western European codeset" that can be used to encode
+most Western European languages adequately. Again, there are several
+ways to write even the name of that one standard. Lamentably.
Two special locales are worth particular mention: "C" and "POSIX".
Currently these are effectively the same locale: the difference is
locale "En_US"--and in Cshish shells (B<csh>, B<tcsh>)
setenv LC_ALL en_US.ISO8859-1
-
+
If you do not know what shell you have, consult your local
helpdesk or the equivalent.
(prefix matches do not count and case usually counts) like "En_US"
without the quotes, then you should be okay because you are using a
locale name that should be installed and available in your system.
-In this case, see L<Fixing system locale configuration>.
+In this case, see L<Permanently fixing your system's locale configuration>.
-=head2 Permanently fixing your locale configuration
+=head2 Permanently fixing your system's locale configuration
This is when you see something like:
standardization is weak in this area. See again the L<Finding
locales> about general rules.
-=head2 Permanently fixing system locale configuration
+=head2 Fixing system locale configuration
Contact a system administrator (preferably your own) and report the exact
error message you get, and ask them to read this same documentation you
The remaining locale category, C<LC_MESSAGES> (possibly supplemented
by others in particular implementations) is not currently used by
-Perl--except possibly to affect the behavior of library functions called
-by extensions outside the standard Perl distribution.
+Perl--except possibly to affect the behavior of library functions
+called by extensions outside the standard Perl distribution and by the
+operating system and its utilities. Note especially that the string
+value of C<$!> and the error messages given by external utilities may
+be changed by C<LC_MESSAGES>. If you want to have portable error
+codes, use C<%!>. See L<Errno>.
=head1 SECURITY
=item *
-If the decimal point character in the C<LC_NUMERIC> locale is
-surreptitiously changed from a dot to a comma, C<sprintf("%g",
-0.123456e3)> produces a string result of "123,456". Many people would
-interpret this as one hundred and twenty-three thousand, four hundred
-and fifty-six.
+Some systems are broken in that they allow the "C" locale to be
+overridden by users. If the decimal point character in the
+C<LC_NUMERIC> category of the "C" locale is surreptitiously changed
+from a dot to a comma, C<sprintf("%g", 0.123456e3)> produces a
+string result of "123,456". Many people would interpret this as
+one hundred and twenty-three thousand, four hundred and fifty-six.
=item *
expression match involving C<\w>, C<\W>, C<\s>, or C<\S>; or of
case-mapping with C<\l>, C<\L>,C<\u> or C<\U>.
-=item B<In-memory formatting function> (sprintf()):
-
-Result is tainted if C<use locale> is in effect.
-
=item B<Output formatting functions> (printf() and write()):
Success/failure result is never tainted.
C<LC_ALL> is the "override-all" locale environment variable. If
set, it overrides all the rest of the locale environment variables.
+=item LANGUAGE
+
+B<NOTE>: C<LANGUAGE> is a GNU extension, it affects you only if you
+are using the GNU libc. This is the case if you are using e.g. Linux.
+If you are using "commercial" UNIXes you are most probably I<not>
+using GNU libc and you can ignore C<LANGUAGE>.
+
+However, in the case you are using C<LANGUAGE>: it affects the
+language of informational, warning, and error messages output by
+commands (in other words, it's like C<LC_MESSAGES>) but it has higher
+priority than L<LC_ALL>. Moreover, it's not a single value but
+instead a "path" (":"-separated list) of I<languages> (not locales).
+See the GNU C<gettext> library documentation for more information.
+
=item LC_CTYPE
In the absence of C<LC_ALL>, C<LC_CTYPE> chooses the character type
(see L<The setlocale function>). By default, Perl still behaves this
way for backward compatibility. If you want a Perl application to pay
attention to locale information, you B<must> use the S<C<use locale>>
-pragma (see L<The use locale Pragma>) to instruct it to do so.
+pragma (see L<The use locale pragma>) to instruct it to do so.
Versions of Perl from 5.002 to 5.003 did use the C<LC_CTYPE>
information if available; that is, C<\w> did understand what
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