(libc.info.gz) Locale Information

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 7.7 Accessing Locale Information
 ================================
 
 There are several ways to access locale information.  The simplest way
 is to let the C library itself do the work.  Several of the functions in
 this library implicitly access the locale data, and use what information
 is provided by the currently selected locale.  This is how the locale
 model is meant to work normally.
 
    As an example take the 'strftime' function, which is meant to nicely
 format date and time information ( Formatting Calendar Time).
 Part of the standard information contained in the 'LC_TIME' category is
 the names of the months.  Instead of requiring the programmer to take
 care of providing the translations the 'strftime' function does this all
 by itself.  '%A' in the format string is replaced by the appropriate
 weekday name of the locale currently selected by 'LC_TIME'.  This is an
 easy example, and wherever possible functions do things automatically in
 this way.
 
    But there are quite often situations when there is simply no function
 to perform the task, or it is simply not possible to do the work
 automatically.  For these cases it is necessary to access the
 information in the locale directly.  To do this the C library provides
 two functions: 'localeconv' and 'nl_langinfo'.  The former is part of ISO C
 and therefore portable, but has a brain-damaged interface.  The second
 is part of the Unix interface and is portable in as far as the system
 follows the Unix standards.
 

Menu

 
* The Lame Way to Locale Data   ISO C's 'localeconv'.
* The Elegant and Fast Way      X/Open's 'nl_langinfo'.
 
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