5 Notes

5.1 Locale Designators

The locale argument to the various locale accessors and to the print functions is a locale designator. A locale designator is one of three things

• A locale object returned by (locale name)
• A string designating a locale, “en_ZA”.
• A symbol eg. :|en_ZA|

5.2 The Default Locale

The default locale is found by looking at various environment variables. If the CL_LOCALE environment variable is set then this locale is loaded. Failing that the locale designated by the environment variable LC_CTYPE is loaded. If these two have failed then the POSIX locale is loaded as the default.

5.3 Time Format Control Characters

The following is a list of each legal control character in a time format string followed by a description of what is does.

• %% A percentage sign.
• %a locale's abbreviated weekday name (Sun..Sat)
• %A locale's full weekday name, variable length (Sunday..Saturday)
• %b locale's abbreviated month name (Jan..Dec)
• %B locale's full month name, variable length (January..December)
• %c locale's date and time (Sat Nov 04 12:02:33 EST 1989)
• %C century [00-99]
• %d day of month (01..31)
• %D date (mm/dd/yy)
• %e day of month, blank padded ( 1..31)
• %F same as %Y-%m-%d
• %g the 2-digit year corresponding to the %V week number
• %G the 4-digit year corresponding to the %V week number
• %h same as %b
• %H hour (00..23)
• %I hour (01..12)
• %j day of year (001..366)
• %k hour ( 0..23)
• %l hour ( 1..12)
• %m month (01..12)
• %M minute (00..59)
• %n a newline
• %N nanoseconds (Always 000000000)
• %p locale's upper case AM or PM indicator (blank in many locales)
• %P locale's lower case am or pm indicator (blank in many locales)
• %r time, 12-hour (hh:mm:ss [AP]M)
• %R time, 24-hour (hh:mm)
• %s seconds since `00:00:00 1970-01-01 UTC'
• %S second (00..60)
• %t a horizontal tab
• %T time, 24-hour (hh:mm:ss)
• %u day of week (1..7); 1 represents Monday
• %U week number of year with Sunday as first day of week (00..53)
• %V week number of year with Monday as first day of week (01..53)
• %w day of week (0..6); 0 represents Sunday
• %W week number of year with Monday as first day of week (00..53)
• %x locale's date representation (locale-d-fmt)
• %X locale's time representation (locale-t-fmt)
• %y last two digits of year (00..99)
• %Y year (1900...)
• %z RFC-2822 style numeric timezone (-0500)
• %Z RFC-2822 style numeric timezone (-0500)

5.4 Accessors to Locale Values.

There are a number of accessor functions to the various locale attributes defined. The functions are named by replacing underscores with hypens and prepending locale- to the name. The following is each defined accessor function in the format Category, Keyword and the accessor function for it.

• LC_MONETARY int_curr_symbol locale-int-curr-symbol
• LC_MONETARY currency_symbol locale-currency-symbol
• LC_MONETARY mon_decimal_point locale-mon-decimal-point
• LC_MONETARY mon_thousands_sep locale-mon-thousands-sep
• LC_MONETARY mon_grouping locale-mon-grouping
• LC_MONETARY positive_sign locale-positive-sign
• LC_MONETARY negative_sign locale-negative-sign
• LC_MONETARY int_frac_digits locale-int-frac-digits
• LC_MONETARY frac_digits locale-frac-digits
• LC_MONETARY p_cs_precedes locale-p-cs-precedes
• LC_MONETARY p_sep_by_space locale-p-sep-by-space
• LC_MONETARY n_cs_precedes locale-n-cs-precedes
• LC_MONETARY n_sep_by_space locale-n-sep-by-space
• LC_MONETARY p_sign_posn locale-p-sign-posn
• LC_MONETARY n_sign_posn locale-n-sign-posn
• LC_NUMERIC decimal_point locale-decimal-point
• LC_NUMERIC thousands_sep locale-thousands-sep
• LC_NUMERIC grouping locale-grouping
• LC_TIME abday locale-abday
• LC_TIME day locale-day
• LC_TIME abmon locale-abmon
• LC_TIME mon locale-mon
• LC_TIME d_t_fmt locale-d-t-fmt
• LC_TIME d_fmt locale-d-fmt
• LC_TIME t_fmt locale-t-fmt
• LC_TIME am_pm locale-am-pm
• LC_TIME t_fmt_ampm locale-t-fmt-ampm
• LC_TIME date_fmt locale-date-fmt
• LC_MESSAGES yesexpr locale-yesexpr
• LC_MESSAGES noexpr locale-noexpr
• LC_PAPER height locale-height
• LC_PAPER width locale-width
• LC_NAME name_fmt locale-name-fmt
• LC_NAME name_gen locale-name-gen
• LC_NAME name_mr locale-name-mr
• LC_NAME name_mrs locale-name-mrs
• LC_NAME name_miss locale-name-miss
• LC_NAME name_ms locale-name-ms
• LC_ADDRESS postal_fmt locale-postal-fmt
• LC_TELEPHONE tel_int_fmt locale-tel-int-fmt
• LC_MEASUREMENT measurement locale-measurement

5.5 Known Issues

• LC_COLLATE and LC_CTYPE categories in the locale files are currently ignored.
• Not all time format directives are supported (U, V and W are not implemented).