setlocale()

Select a program's locale

Synopsis:

#include <locale.h>

char * setlocale( int category, 
                  const char * locale );

Library:

libc

Description:

The setlocale() function selects a program's locale, according to the specified category and the specified locale.

The following built-in locales are offered: C (default) C-TRADITIONAL POSIX

A locale affects several things:

• The collating sequence (the order in which characters compare with one another) used by strcoll() or wcscoll().
• The way certain character-handling functions (such as isalnum() and isalpha()) operate. The wide-character versions include iswalnum() and iswalpha().
• The decimal-point character used in formatted input/output and string conversion (printf(), scanf(), and friends).
• The format and names used in the string produced by the strftime() and wcsftime() functions.

See the localeconv() function for more information about the locale.

Valid values for the category are:

LC_ALL

Select the entire locale environment.

LC_COLLATE

Select only the collating sequence.

LC_CTYPE

Select only the character-handling information.

LC_MESSAGES

Specify the language to be used for messages.

LC_MONETARY

Select only monetary formatting information.

LC_NUMERIC

Select only the numeric-format environment.

LC_TIME

Select only the time-related environment.

At the start of a program, the default C locale is initialized as if the following call to setlocale() appeared at the start of main():

(void)setlocale( LC_ALL, "C" );

Returns:

A pointer to a system-generated string indicating the previous locale, or NULL if an error occurs.

Classification:

ANSI

See also:

isalpha(), isascii(), localeconv(), printf(), scanf(), strcat(), strchr(), strcmp(), strcoll(), strcpy(), strftime(), strlen(), strpbrk(), strspn(), strtod(), strtok(), strxfrm() tm,