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PERLLOCALE !!!PERLLOCALE NAME DESCRIPTION PREPARING TO USE LOCALES USING LOCALES LOCALE CATEGORIES SECURITY ENVIRONMENT NOTES BUGS SEE ALSO HISTORY ---- !!NAME perllocale - Perl locale handling (internationalization and localization) !!DESCRIPTION Perl supports language-specific notions of data such as ``is this a letter'', ``what is the uppercase equivalent of this letter'', and ``which of these letters comes first''. These are important issues, especially for languages other than English--but also for English: it would be naieve to imagine that A-Za-z defines all the ``letters'' needed to write in English. Perl is also aware that some character other than '.' may be preferred as a decimal point, and that output date representations may be language-specific. The process of making an application take account of its users' preferences in such matters is called __internationalization__ (often abbreviated as __i18n__); telling such an application about a particular set of preferences is known as __localization__ (__l10n__). Perl can understand language-specific data via the standardized ( ISO C, XPG4 , POSIX 1.c) method called ``the locale system''. The locale system is controlled per application using one pragma, one function call, and several environment variables. __NOTE__ : This feature is new in Perl 5.004, and does not apply unless an application specifically requests it--see ``Backward compatibility''. The one exception is that ''write()'' now __always__ uses the current locale - see `` NOTES ''. !!PREPARING TO USE LOCALES If Perl applications are to understand and present your data correctly according a locale of your choice, __all__ of the following must be true: __Your operating system must support the locale system__. If it does, you should find that the ''setlocale()'' function is a documented part of its C library. __Definitions for locales that you use must be installed__. You, or your system administrator, must make sure that this is the case. The available locales, the location in which they are kept, and the manner in which they are installed all vary from system to system. Some systems provide only a few, hard-wired locales and do not allow more to be added. Others allow you to add ``canned'' locales provided by the system supplier. Still others allow you or the system administrator to define and add arbitrary locales. (You may have to ask your supplier to provide canned locales that are not delivered with your operating system.) Read your system documentation for further illumination. __Perl must believe that the locale system is supported__. If it does, perl -V:d_setlocale will say that the value for d_setlocale is define. If you want a Perl application to process and present your data according to a particular locale, the application code should include the use locale pragma (see ``The use locale pragma'') where appropriate, and __at least one__ of the following must be true: __The locale-determining environment variables (see `` ENVIRONMENT '') must be correctly set up__ at the time the application is started, either by yourself or by whoever set up your system account. __The application must set its own locale__ using the method described in ``The setlocale function''. !!USING LOCALES __The use locale pragma__ By default, Perl ignores the current locale. The use locale pragma tells Perl to use the current locale for some operations: __The comparison operators__ (lt, le, cmp, ge, and gt) and the POSIX string collation functions ''strcoll()'' and ''strxfrm()'' use LC_COLLATE. ''sort()'' is also affected if used without an explicit comparison function, because it uses cmp by default. __Note:__ eq and ne are unaffected by locale: they always perform a byte-by-byte comparison of their scalar operands. What's more, if cmp finds that its operands are equal according to the collation sequence specified by the current locale, it goes on to perform a byte-by-byte comparison, and only returns ''0'' (equal) if the operands are bit-for-bit identical. If you really want to know whether two strings--which eq and cmp may consider different--are equal as far as collation in the locale is concerned, see the discussion in ``Category LC_COLLATE: Collation''. __Regular expressions and case-modification functions__ (''uc()'', ''lc()'', ''ucfirst()'', and ''lcfirst()'') use LC_CTYPE __The formatting functions__ (''printf()'', ''sprintf()'' and ''write()'') use LC_NUMERIC __The POSIX date formatting function__ (''strftime()'') uses LC_TIME. LC_COLLATE, LC_CTYPE, and so on, are discussed further in `` LOCALE CATEGORIES ''. The default behavior is restored with the no locale pragma, or upon reaching the end of block enclosing use locale. The string result of any operation that uses locale information is tainted, as it is possible for a locale to be untrustworthy. See `` SECURITY ''. __The setlocale function__ You can switch locales as often as you wish at run time with the ''POSIX::setlocale()'' function: # This functionality not usable prior to Perl 5.004 require 5.004; # Import locale-handling tool set from POSIX module. # This example uses: setlocale -- the function call # LC_CTYPE -- explained below use POSIX qw(locale_h); # query and save the old locale $old_locale = setlocale(LC_CTYPE); setlocale(LC_CTYPE, setlocale(LC_CTYPE, # restore the old locale setlocale(LC_CTYPE, $old_locale); The first argument of ''setlocale()'' gives the __category__, the second the __locale__. The category tells in what aspect of data processing you want to apply locale-specific rules. Category names are discussed in `` LOCALE CATEGORIES '' and `` ENVIRONMENT ''. The locale is the name of a collection of customization information corresponding to a particular combination of language, country or territory, and codeset. Read on for hints on the naming of locales: not all systems name locales as in the example. If no second argument is provided and the category is something else than LC_ALL , the function returns a string naming the current locale for the category. You can use this value as the second argument in a subsequent call to ''setlocale()''. If no second argument is provided and the category is LC_ALL , the result is implementation-dependent. It may be a string of concatenated locales names (separator also implementation-dependent) or a single locale name. Please consult your setlocale(3) for details. If a second argument is given and it corresponds to a valid locale, the locale for the category is set to that value, and the function returns the now-current locale value. You can then use this in yet another call to ''setlocale()''. (In some implementations, the return value may sometimes differ from the value you gave as the second argument--think of it as an alias for the value you gave.) As the example shows, if the second argument is an empty string, the category's locale is returned to the default specified by the corresponding environment variables. Generally, this results in a return to the default that was in force when Perl started up: changes to the environment made by the application after startup may or may not be noticed, depending on your system's C library. If the second argument does not correspond to a valid locale, the locale for the category is not changed, and the function returns ''undef''. For further information about the categories, consult setlocale(3). __Finding locales__ For locales available in your system, consult also setlocale(3) to see whether it leads to the list of available locales (search for the ''SEE ALSO'' section). If that fails, try the following command lines: locale -a nlsinfo ls /usr/lib/nls/loc ls /usr/lib/locale 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 en_US.iso88591 de_DE.iso88591 ru_RU.iso88595 en_US de_DE ru_RU en de ru english german russian 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 configuration resides have not been. The basic form of the name is ''language_territory''__.__''codeset'', but the latter parts after ''language'' are not always present. The ''language'' and ''country'' are usually from the standards __ISO 3166__ and __ISO 639__, the two-letter abbreviations for the countries and the languages of the world, respectively. The ''codeset'' part often mentions some __ISO 8859__ character set, the Latin codesets. For example, 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 mainly that the first one is defined by the C standard, the second by the POSIX standard. They define the __default locale__ in which every program starts in the absence of locale information in its environment. (The ''default'' default locale, if you will.) Its language is (American) English and its character codeset ASCII . __NOTE__ : Not all systems have the `` POSIX '' locale (not all systems are POSIX-conformant), so use ``C'' when you need explicitly to specify this default locale. __LOCALE PROBLEMS__ You may encounter the following warning message at Perl startup: perl: warning: Setting locale failed. perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings: LC_ALL = This means that your locale settings had LC_ALL set to ``En_US'' and LANG exists but has no value. Perl tried to believe you but could not. Instead, Perl gave up and fell back to the ``C'' locale, the default locale that is supposed to work no matter what. This usually means your locale settings were wrong, they mention locales your system has never heard of, or the locale installation in your system has problems (for example, some system files are broken or missing). There are quick and temporary fixes to these problems, as well as more thorough and lasting fixes. __Temporarily fixing locale problems__ The two quickest fixes are either to render Perl silent about any locale inconsistencies or to run Perl under the default locale ``C''. Perl's moaning about locale problems can be silenced by setting the environment variable PERL_BADLANG to a zero value, for example ``0''. This method really just sweeps the problem under the carpet: you tell Perl to shut up even when Perl sees that something is wrong. Do not be surprised if later something locale-dependent misbehaves. Perl can be run under the ``C'' locale by setting the environment variable LC_ALL to ``C''. This method is perhaps a bit more civilized than the PERL_BADLANG approach, but setting LC_ALL (or other locale variables) may affect other programs as well, not just Perl. In particular, external programs run from within Perl will see these changes. If you make the new settings permanent (read on), all programs you run see the changes. See ENVIRONMENT for the full list of relevant environment variables and `` USING LOCALES '' for their effects in Perl. Effects in other programs are easily deducible. For example, the variable LC_COLLATE may well affect your __sort__ program (or whatever the program that arranges `records' alphabetically in your system is called). You can test out changing these variables temporarily, and if the new settings seem to help, put those settings into your shell startup files. Consult your local documentation for the exact details. For in Bourne-like shells (__sh__, __ksh__, __bash__, __zsh__): LC_ALL=en_US.ISO8859-1 export LC_ALL This assumes that we saw the locale ``en_US.ISO8859-1'' using the commands discussed above. We decided to try that instead of the above faulty locale ``En_US''--and in Cshish shells (__csh__, __tcsh__) setenv LC_ALL en_US.ISO8859-1 If you do not know what shell you have, consult your local helpdesk or the equivalent. __Permanently fixing locale problems__ The slower but superior fixes are when you may be able to yourself fix the misconfiguration of your own environment variables. The mis(sing)configuration of the whole system's locales usually requires the help of your friendly system administrator. First, see earlier in this document about ``Finding locales''. That tells how to find which locales are really supported--and more importantly, installed--on your system. In our example error message, environment variables affecting the locale are listed in the order of decreasing importance (and unset variables do not matter). Therefore, having LC_ALL set to ``En_US'' must have been the bad choice, as shown by the error message. First try fixing locale settings listed first. Second, if using the listed commands you see something __exactly__ (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 ``Permanently fixing your system's locale configuration''. __Permanently fixing your system's locale configuration__ This is when you see something like: perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings: LC_ALL = but then cannot see that ``En_US'' listed by the above-mentioned commands. You may see things like ``en_US.ISO8859-1'', but that isn't the same. In this case, try running under a locale that you can list and which somehow matches what you tried. The rules for matching locale names are a bit vague because standardization is weak in this area. See again the ``Finding locales'' about general rules. __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 are now reading. They should be able to check whether there is something wrong with the locale configuration of the system. The ``Finding locales'' section is unfortunately a bit vague about the exact commands and places because these things are not that standardized. __The localeconv function__ The ''POSIX::localeconv()'' function allows you to get particulars of the locale-dependent numeric formatting information specified by the current LC_NUMERIC and LC_MONETARY locales. (If you just want the name of the current locale for a particular category, use ''POSIX::setlocale()'' with a single parameter--see ``The setlocale function''.) use POSIX qw(locale_h); # Get a reference to a hash of locale-dependent info $locale_values = localeconv(); # Output sorted list of the values for (sort keys %$locale_values) { printf ''localeconv()'' takes no arguments, and returns __a reference to__ a hash. The keys of this hash are variable names for formatting, such as decimal_point and thousands_sep. The values are the corresponding, er, values. See ``localeconv'' in POSIX for a longer example listing the categories an implementation might be expected to provide; some provide more and others fewer. You don't need an explicit use locale, because ''localeconv()'' always observes the current locale. Here's a simple-minded example program that rewrites its command-line parameters as integers correctly formatted in the current locale: # See comments in previous example require 5.004; use POSIX qw(locale_h); # Get some of locale's numeric formatting parameters my ($thousands_sep, $grouping) = @{localeconv()}{'thousands_sep', 'grouping'}; # Apply defaults if values are missing $thousands_sep = ',' unless $thousands_sep; # grouping and mon_grouping are packed lists # of small integers (characters) telling the # grouping (thousand_seps and mon_thousand_seps # being the group dividers) of numbers and # monetary quantities. The integers' meanings: # 255 means no more grouping, 0 means repeat # the previous grouping, 1-254 means use that # as the current grouping. Grouping goes from # right to left (low to high digits). In the # below we cheat slightly by never using anything # else than the first grouping (whatever that is). if ($grouping) { @grouping = unpack( # Format command line params for current locale for (@ARGV) { $_ = int; # Chop non-integer part 1 while s/(d)(d{$grouping[[0]}($$thousands_sep))/$1$thousands_sep$2/; print !!LOCALE CATEGORIES The following subsections describe basic locale categories. Beyond these, some combination categories allow manipulation of more than one basic category at a time. See `` ENVIRONMENT '' for a discussion of these. __Category LC_COLLATE: Collation__ In the scope of use locale, Perl looks to the LC_COLLATE environment variable to determine the application's notions on collation (ordering) of characters. For example, 'b' follows 'a' in Latin alphabets, but where do 'a' and 'aa' belong? And while 'color' follows 'chocolate' in English, what about in Spanish? The following collations all make sense and you may meet any of them if you ``use locale''. A B C D E a b c d e A a B b C c D d E e a A b B c C d D e E a b c d e A B C D E Here is a code snippet to tell what ``word'' characters are in the current locale, in that locale's order: use locale; print +(sort grep /w/, map { chr } 0..255), Compare this with the characters that you see and their order if you state explicitly that the locale should be ignored: no locale; print +(sort grep /w/, map { chr } 0..255), This machine-native collation (which is what you get unless use locale has appeared earlier in the same block) must be used for sorting raw binary data, whereas the locale-dependent collation of the first example is useful for natural text. As noted in `` USING LOCALES '', cmp compares according to the current collation locale when use locale is in effect, but falls back to a byte-by-byte comparison for strings that the locale says are equal. You can use ''POSIX::strcoll()'' if you don't want this fall-back: use POSIX qw(strcoll); $equal_in_locale = !strcoll( $equal_in_locale will be true if the collation locale specifies a dictionary-like ordering that ignores space characters completely and which folds case. If you have a single string that you want to check for ``equality in locale'' against several others, you might think you could gain a little efficiency by using ''POSIX::strxfrm()'' in conjunction with eq: use POSIX qw(strxfrm); $xfrm_string = strxfrm( ''strxfrm()'' takes a string and maps it into a transformed string for use in byte-by-byte comparisons against other transformed strings during collation. ``Under the hood'', locale-affected Perl comparison operators call ''strxfrm()'' for both operands, then do a byte-by-byte comparison of the transformed strings. By calling ''strxfrm()'' explicitly and using a non locale-affected comparison, the example attempts to save a couple of transformations. But in fact, it doesn't save anything: Perl magic (see ``Magic Variables'' in perlguts) creates the transformed version of a string the first time it's needed in a comparison, then keeps this version around in case it's needed again. An example rewritten the easy way with cmp runs just about as fast. It also copes with null characters embedded in strings; if you call ''strxfrm()'' directly, it treats the first null it finds as a terminator. don't expect the transformed strings it produces to be portable across systems--or even from one revision of your operating system to the next. In short, don't call ''strxfrm()'' directly: let Perl do it for you. Note: use locale isn't shown in some of these examples because it isn't needed: ''strcoll()'' and ''strxfrm()'' exist only to generate locale-dependent results, and so always obey the current LC_COLLATE locale. __Category LC_CTYPE: Character Types__ In the scope of use locale, Perl obeys the LC_CTYPE locale setting. This controls the application's notion of which characters are alphabetic. This affects Perl's w regular expression metanotation, which stands for alphanumeric characters--that is, alphabetic, numeric, and including other special characters such as the underscore or hyphen. (Consult perlre for more information about regular expressions.) Thanks to LC_CTYPE, depending on your locale setting, characters like 'ae', 'd', 'ss', and 'o/' may be understood as w characters. The LC_CTYPE locale also provides the map used in transliterating characters between lower and uppercase. This affects the case-mapping functions--''lc()'', lcfirst, ''uc()'', and ''ucfirst()''; case-mapping interpolation with l, L, u, or U in double-quoted strings and s/// substitutions; and case-independent regular expression pattern matching using the i modifier. Finally, LC_CTYPE affects the POSIX character-class test functions--''isalpha()'', ''islower()'', and so on. For example, if you move from the ``C'' locale to a 7-bit Scandinavian one, you may find--possibly to your surprise--that ``'' moves from the ''ispunct()'' class to ''isalpha()''. __Note:__ A broken or malicious LC_CTYPE locale definition may result in clearly ineligible characters being considered to be alphanumeric by your application. For strict matching of (mundane) letters and digits--for example, in command strings--locale-aware applications should use w inside a no locale block. See `` SECURITY ''. __Category LC_NUMERIC: Numeric Formatting__ In the scope of use locale, Perl obeys the LC_NUMERIC locale information, which controls an application's idea of how numbers should be formatted for human readability by the ''printf()'', ''sprintf()'', and ''write()'' functions. String-to-numeric conversion by the ''POSIX::strtod()'' function is also affected. In most implementations the only effect is to change the character used for the decimal point--perhaps from '.' to ','. These functions aren't aware of such niceties as thousands separation and so on. (See ``The localeconv function'' if you care about these things.) Output produced by ''print()'' is also affected by the current locale: it depends on whether use locale or no locale is in effect, and corresponds to what you'd get from ''printf()'' in the ``C'' locale. The same is true for Perl's internal conversions between numeric and string formats: use POSIX qw(strtod); use locale; $n = 5/2; # Assign numeric 2.5 to $n $a = print printf print __Category LC_MONETARY: Formatting of monetary amounts__ The C standard defines the LC_MONETARY category, but no function that is affected by its contents. (Those with experience of standards committees will recognize that the working group decided to punt on the issue.) Consequently, Perl takes no notice of it. If you really want to use LC_MONETARY, you can query its contents--see ``The localeconv function''--and use the information that it returns in your application's own formatting of currency amounts. However, you may well find that the information, voluminous and complex though it may be, still does not quite meet your requirements: currency formatting is a hard nut to crack. __LC_TIME__ Output produced by ''POSIX::strftime()'', which builds a formatted human-readable date/time string, is affected by the current LC_TIME locale. Thus, in a French locale, the output produced by the %B format element (full month name) for the first month of the year would be ``janvier''. Here's how to get a list of long month names in the current locale: use POSIX qw(strftime); for (0..11) { $long_month_name[[$_] = strftime( Note: use locale isn't needed in this example: as a function that exists only to generate locale-dependent results, ''strftime()'' always obeys the current LC_TIME locale. __Other categories__ The remaining locale category, 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 and by the operating system and its utilities. Note especially that the string value of $! and the error messages given by external utilities may be changed by LC_MESSAGES. If you want to have portable error codes, use %!. See Errno. !!SECURITY Although the main discussion of Perl security issues can be found in perlsec, a discussion of Perl's locale handling would be incomplete if it did not draw your attention to locale-dependent security issues. Locales--particularly on systems that allow unprivileged users to build their own locales--are untrustworthy. A malicious (or just plain broken) locale can make a locale-aware application give unexpected results. Here are a few possibilities: Regular expression checks for safe file names or mail addresses using w may be spoofed by an LC_CTYPE locale that claims that characters such as String interpolation with case-mapping, as in, say, $dest = , may produce dangerous results if a bogus LC_CTYPE case-mapping table is in effect. A sneaky LC_COLLATE locale could result in the names of students with ``D'' grades appearing ahead of those with ``A''s. An application that takes the trouble to use information in LC_MONETARY may format debits as if they were credits and vice versa if that locale has been subverted. Or it might make payments in US dollars instead of Hong Kong dollars. The date and day names in dates formatted by ''strftime()'' could be manipulated to advantage by a malicious user able to subvert the LC_DATE locale. (``Look--it says I wasn't in the building on Sunday.'') Such dangers are not peculiar to the locale system: any aspect of an application's environment which may be modified maliciously presents similar challenges. Similarly, they are not specific to Perl: any programming language that allows you to write programs that take account of their environment exposes you to these issues. Perl cannot protect you from all possibilities shown in the examples--there is no substitute for your own vigilance--but, when use locale is in effect, Perl uses the tainting mechanism (see perlsec) to mark string results that become locale-dependent, and which may be untrustworthy in consequence. Here is a summary of the tainting behavior of operators and functions that may be affected by the locale: __Comparison operators__ (lt, le, ge, gt and cmp): Scalar true/false (or less/equal/greater) result is never tainted. __Case-mapping interpolation__ (with l, L, u or U) Result string containing interpolated material is tainted if use locale is in effect. __Matching operator__ (m//): Scalar true/false result never tainted. Subpatterns, either delivered as a list-context result or as $1 etc. are tainted if use locale is in effect, and the subpattern regular expression contains w (to match an alphanumeric character), W (non-alphanumeric character), s (white-space character), or S (non white-space character). The matched-pattern variable, $ use locale is in effect and the regular expression contains w, W, s, or S. __Substitution operator__ (s///): Has the same behavior as the match operator. Also, the left operand of =~ becomes tainted when use locale in effect if modified as a result of a substitution based on a regular expression match involving w, W, s, or S; or of case-mapping with l, L,u or U. __Output formatting functions__ (''printf()'' and ''write()''): Results are never tainted because otherwise even output from print, for example print(1/7), should be tainted if use locale is in effect. __Case-mapping functions__ (''lc()'', ''lcfirst()'', ''uc()'', ''ucfirst()''): Results are tainted if use locale is in effect. __POSIX locale-dependent functions__ (''localeconv()'', ''strcoll()'', ''strftime()'', ''strxfrm()''): Results are never tainted. __POSIX character class tests__ (''isalnum()'', ''isalpha()'', ''isdigit()'', ''isgraph()'', ''islower()'', ''isprint()'', ''ispunct()'', ''isspace()'', ''isupper()'', ''isxdigit()''): True/false results are never tainted. Three examples illustrate locale-dependent tainting. The first program, which ignores its locale, won't run: a value taken directly from the command line may not be used to name an output file when taint checks are enabled. #/usr/local/bin/perl -T # Run with taint checking # Command line sanity check omitted... $tainted_output_file = shift; open(F, The program can be made to run by ``laundering'' the tainted value through a regular expression: the second example--which still ignores locale information--runs, creating the file named on its command line if it can. #/usr/local/bin/perl -T $tainted_output_file = shift; $tainted_output_file =~ m%[[w/]+%; $untainted_output_file = $ open(F, Compare this with a similar but locale-aware program: #/usr/local/bin/perl -T $tainted_output_file = shift; use locale; $tainted_output_file =~ m%[[w/]+%; $localized_output_file = $ open(F, This third program fails to run because $w while use locale is in effect. !!ENVIRONMENT PERL_BADLANG A string that can suppress Perl's warning about failed locale settings at startup. Failure can occur if the locale support in the operating system is lacking (broken) in some way--or if you mistyped the name of a locale when you set up your environment. If this environment variable is absent, or has a value that does not evaluate to integer zero--that is, ``0'' or __NOTE__ : PERL_BADLANG only gives you a way to hide the warning message. The message tells about some problem in your system's locale support, and you should investigate what the problem is. The following environment variables are not specific to Perl: They are part of the standardized ( ISO C, XPG4 , POSIX 1.c) ''setlocale()'' method for controlling an application's opinion on data. LC_ALL LC_ALL is the ``override-all'' locale environment variable. If set, it overrides all the rest of the locale environment variables. LANGUAGE __NOTE__ : 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 ''not'' using GNU libc and you can ignore LANGUAGE. However, in the case you are using LANGUAGE: it affects the language of informational, warning, and error messages output by commands (in other words, it's like LC_MESSAGES) but it has higher priority than LC_ALL . Moreover, it's not a single value but instead a ``path'' (``:''-separated list) of ''languages'' (not locales). See the GNU gettext library documentation for more information. LC_CTYPE In the absence of LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE chooses the character type locale. In the absence of both LC_ALL and LC_CTYPE, LANG chooses the character type locale. LC_COLLATE In the absence of LC_ALL, LC_COLLATE chooses the collation (sorting) locale. In the absence of both LC_ALL and LC_COLLATE, LANG chooses the collation locale. LC_MONETARY In the absence of LC_ALL, LC_MONETARY chooses the monetary formatting locale. In the absence of both LC_ALL and LC_MONETARY, LANG chooses the monetary formatting locale. LC_NUMERIC In the absence of LC_ALL, LC_NUMERIC chooses the numeric format locale. In the absence of both LC_ALL and LC_NUMERIC, LANG chooses the numeric format. LC_TIME In the absence of LC_ALL, LC_TIME chooses the date and time formatting locale. In the absence of both LC_ALL and LC_TIME, LANG chooses the date and time formatting locale. LANG LANG is the ``catch-all'' locale environment variable. If it is set, it is used as the last resort after the overall LC_ALL and the category-specific LC_.... !!NOTES __Backward compatibility__ Versions of Perl prior to 5.004 __mostly__ ignored locale information, generally behaving as if something similar to the locale were always in force, even if the program environment suggested otherwise (see ``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 __must__ use the use locale pragma (see ``The use locale pragma'') to instruct it to do so. Versions of Perl from 5.002 to 5.003 did use the LC_CTYPE information if available; that is, w did understand what were the letters according to the locale environment variables. The problem was that the user had no control over the feature: if the C library supported locales, Perl used them. __I18N:Collate obsolete__ In versions of Perl prior to 5.004, per-locale collation was possible using the I18N::Collate library module. This module is now mildly obsolete and should be avoided in new applications. The LC_COLLATE functionality is now integrated into the Perl core language: One can use locale-specific scalar data completely normally with use locale, so there is no longer any need to juggle with the scalar references of I18N::Collate. __Sort speed and memory use impacts__ Comparing and sorting by locale is usually slower than the default sorting; slow-downs of two to four times have been observed. It will also consume more memory: once a Perl scalar variable has participated in any string comparison or sorting operation obeying the locale collation rules, it will take 3-15 times more memory than before. (The exact multiplier depends on the string's contents, the operating system and the locale.) These downsides are dictated more by the operating system's implementation of the locale system than by Perl. ''write()'' __and LC_NUMERIC__ Formats are the only part of Perl that unconditionally use information from a program's locale; if a program's environment specifies an LC_NUMERIC locale, it is always used to specify the decimal point character in formatted output. Formatted output cannot be controlled by use locale because the pragma is tied to the block structure of the program, and, for historical reasons, formats exist outside that block structure. __Freely available locale definitions__ There is a large collection of locale definitions at ftp://dkuug.dk/i18n/WG15-collection. You should be aware that it is unsupported, and is not claimed to be fit for any purpose. If your system allows installation of arbitrary locales, you may find the definitions useful as they are, or as a basis for the development of your own locales. __I18n and l10n__ ``Internationalization'' is often abbreviated as __i18n__ because its first and last letters are separated by eighteen others. (You may guess why the internalin ... internaliti ... i18n tends to get abbreviated.) In the same way, ``localization'' is often abbreviated to __l10n__. __An imperfect standard__ Internationalization, as defined in the C and POSIX standards, can be criticized as incomplete, ungainly, and having too large a granularity. (Locales apply to a whole process, when it would arguably be more useful to have them apply to a single thread, window group, or whatever.) They also have a tendency, like standards groups, to divide the world into nations, when we all know that the world can equally well be divided into bankers, bikers, gamers, and so on. But, for now, it's the only standard we've got. This may be construed as a bug. !!BUGS __Broken systems__ In certain systems, the operating system's locale support is broken and cannot be fixed or used by Perl. Such deficiencies can and will result in mysterious hangs and/or Perl core dumps when the use locale is in effect. When confronted with such a system, please report in excruciating detail to perlbug@perl.org'' '' !!SEE ALSO ``isalnum'' in POSIX , ``isalpha'' in POSIX , ``isdigit'' in POSIX , ``isgraph'' in POSIX , ``islower'' in POSIX , ``isprint'' in POSIX , ``ispunct'' in POSIX , ``isspace'' in POSIX , ``isupper'' in POSIX , ``isxdigit'' in POSIX , ``localeconv'' in POSIX , ``setlocale'' in POSIX , ``strcoll'' in POSIX , ``strftime'' in POSIX , ``strtod'' in POSIX , ``strxfrm'' in POSIX . !!HISTORY Jarkko Hietaniemi's original ''perli18n.pod'' heavily hacked by Dominic Dunlop, assisted by the perl5-porters. Prose worked over a bit by Tom Christiansen. Last update: Thu Jun 11 08:44:13 MDT 1998 ----
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