LOCALE(M)                                  UNIX System V



     Name
          locale - the international locale


     Syntax
          language [  [ territory ] [ . [ codeset ] ] ]
          "C"


     Description
          The international  locale  is  a  definition  of  the  local
          conventions   to  be  used  by  UNIX  libraries  (and  hence
          utilities and  applications)  for  features  whose  behavior
          varies internationally.

          The locale is specified by a character string  of  the  form
          language_territory.codeset, where:

          language    represents both the language of text files being
                      used,  and  the  preferred language for messages
                      (where the utility or application is capable  of
                      displaying messages in many languages),

          territory   represents the  geographical  location  (usually
                      the   country)   determining   such  factors  as
                      currency and numeric formats, and

          codeset     represents the character  set  in  use  for  the
                      internal representation of text.

          The locale  string  ``french_canada.8859''  could  therefore
          represent   a  Canadian  user  using  the  French  language,
          processing data using the ISO 8859/1 standard  international
          character set.

          Each element (language, territory or codeset) can be  up  to
          14  characters  long, and should use only alphanumeric ASCII
          characters (see ascii(M)).

          Note that the  locale  is  not  required  to  be  completely
          specified:  territory  and  codeset  are  optional.   When a
          locale is incompletely specified, missing values are  sought
          in the following sequence:

          1. For each subclass, such as LC_TIME ,  in  an  environment
             variable of the same name as the subclass.

          2. In the LANG environment variable.

          3. In the file /etc/default/lang .

          The special locale  string  ``C'',  used  to  represent  the
          minimal  environment  needed for the C programming language,
          is taken to be equivalent to ``english_us.ascii''.

          The format of the file /etc/default/lang  is  at  least  one
          line, of the form:

               LANG="language_territory.codeset"

          A partly specified locale string will  be  expanded  to  the
          first  LANG  =  entry  in  which the specified locale fields
          match.

          Thus if the /etc/default/lang file contains the following:

               LANG=english_us.ascii
               LANG=english_uk.8859
               LANG=french_france.8859

          A  locale  string  ``english_uk''  will  get   expanded   to
          ``english_uk.8859'', whereas a locale string ``french'' will
          get expanded to ``french_france.8859''.

          The information used to configure  a  particular  locale  is
          generated  by the utilities chrtbl(M), coltbl(M), mestbl(M),
          montbl(M),  numtbl(M)  and  timtbl(M).   The  output   files
          produced  by  these  utilities  (ctype,  collate,  currency,
          messages, numeric and time respectively) must  be  installed
          in   the   correct   place   in   the   directory  structure
          /usr/lib/lang.  The  correct  directory  name  is  found  by
          substituting  the language, territory and codeset names into
          the   string   ``/usr/lib/lang/language/territory/codeset''.
          The files should be installed into this directory with their
          existing file name (such as ctype).

          A suggested naming convention for locales is as follows:

          language
               The name of the language, in English, such as: english,
               french, german.

          territory
               The name of the nation, in English, such  as:  us,  uk,
               canada, france, germany, switzerland.

          codeset
               An identification of the codeset, such as: ascii, 8859.


     See Also
          chrtbl(M),  coltbl(M),  environ(M),  mestbl(M),   montbl(M),
          numtbl(M), setlocale(S), timtbl(M)


     Value Added
          locale is an extension of AT&T  System  V  provided  by  the
          Santa Cruz Operation.


     (printed 8/23/89)                                  LOCALE(M)