(libc.info.gz) Locale Categories
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7.3 Locale Categories
=====================
The purposes that locales serve are grouped into "categories", so that a
user or a program can choose the locale for each category independently.
Here is a table of categories; each name is both an environment variable
that a user can set, and a macro name that you can use as the first
argument to 'setlocale'.
The contents of the environment variable (or the string in the second
argument to 'setlocale') has to be a valid locale name. Locale
Names.
'LC_COLLATE'
This category applies to collation of strings (functions 'strcoll'
and 'strxfrm'); see Collation Functions.
'LC_CTYPE'
This category applies to classification and conversion of
characters, and to multibyte and wide characters; see
Character Handling, and Character Set Handling.
'LC_MONETARY'
This category applies to formatting monetary values; see
General Numeric.
'LC_NUMERIC'
This category applies to formatting numeric values that are not
monetary; see General Numeric.
'LC_TIME'
This category applies to formatting date and time values; see
Formatting Calendar Time.
'LC_MESSAGES'
This category applies to selecting the language used in the user
interface for message translation ( The Uniforum approach;
Message catalogs a la X/Open) and contains regular
expressions for affirmative and negative responses.
'LC_ALL'
This is not a category; it is only a macro that you can use with
'setlocale' to set a single locale for all purposes. Setting this
environment variable overwrites all selections by the other 'LC_*'
variables or 'LANG'.
'LANG'
If this environment variable is defined, its value specifies the
locale to use for all purposes except as overridden by the
variables above.
When developing the message translation functions it was felt that
the functionality provided by the variables above is not sufficient.
For example, it should be possible to specify more than one locale name.
Take a Swedish user who better speaks German than English, and a program
whose messages are output in English by default. It should be possible
to specify that the first choice of language is Swedish, the second
German, and if this also fails to use English. This is possible with
the variable 'LANGUAGE'. For further description of this GNU extension
see Using gettextized software.
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