perllocale - Perl locale handling (internationalization and localization)
Perl supports language-specific notions of data such as ``is this a
letter'', ``what is the uppercase equivalent of this letter'', and ``which
of these letters comes first''. These are important issues, especially for
languages other than English--but also for English: it would be naïve
to imagine that A-Za-z defines all the ``letters'' needed to write in English. Perl is also aware
that some character other than '.' may be preferred as a decimal point, and
that output date representations may be language-specific. The process of
making an application take account of its users' preferences in such
matters is called internationalization (often abbreviated as i18n); telling such an application about a particular set of preferences is
known as
localization (l10n).
Perl can understand language-specific data via the standardized (ISO C, XPG4, POSIX 1.c) method called ``the locale system''. The locale system is controlled per application using one pragma, one function call, and several environment variables.
NOTE: This feature is new in Perl 5.004, and does not apply unless an
application specifically requests it--see Backward compatibility. The one exception is that
write() now always uses the current locale - see NOTES.
If Perl applications are to understand and present your data correctly according a locale of your choice, all of the following must be true:
Your operating system must support the locale system. If it does, you should find that the
setlocale() function is a documented part of its
C library.
perl -V:d_setlocale will say that the value for d_setlocale is
define.
If you want a Perl application to process and present your data according
to a particular locale, the application code should include the use locale pragma (see The use locale pragma) where appropriate, and at least one of the following must be true:
The locale-determining environment variables (see ENVIRONMENT) must be correctly set up at the time the application is started, either by yourself or by whoever set up your system account.
By default, Perl ignores the current locale. The use locale
pragma tells Perl to use the current locale for some operations:
The comparison operators (lt, le, cmp, ge, and gt) and the
POSIX string collation functions
strcoll() and
strxfrm() use
LC_COLLATE.
sort() is also affected if used
without an explicit comparison function, because it uses cmp by default.
Note: eq and ne are unaffected by locale: they always perform a byte-by-byte comparison of
their scalar operands. What's more, if cmp finds that its operands are equal according to the collation sequence
specified by the current locale, it goes on to perform a byte-by-byte
comparison, and only returns 0 (equal) if the operands are bit-for-bit identical. If you really want to
know whether two strings--which eq and cmp may consider different--are equal as far as collation in the locale is
concerned, see the discussion in
Category LC_COLLATE: Collation.
lc(),
ucfirst(), and
lcfirst()) use
LC_CTYPE
sprintf() and
write()) use
LC_NUMERIC
LC_TIME.
LC_COLLATE, LC_CTYPE, and so on, are discussed further in LOCALE CATEGORIES.
The default behavior is restored with the no locale pragma, or upon reaching the end of block enclosing use locale.
The string result of any operation that uses locale information is tainted, as it is possible for a locale to be untrustworthy. See SECURITY.
You can switch locales as often as you wish at run time with the POSIX::setlocale() function:
# This functionality not usable prior to Perl 5.004
require 5.004;
# Import locale-handling tool set from POSIX module.
# This example uses: setlocale -- the function call
# LC_CTYPE -- explained below
use POSIX qw(locale_h);
# query and save the old locale
$old_locale = setlocale(LC_CTYPE);
setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "fr_CA.ISO8859-1");
# LC_CTYPE now in locale "French, Canada, codeset ISO 8859-1"
setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "");
# LC_CTYPE now reset to default defined by LC_ALL/LC_CTYPE/LANG
# environment variables. See below for documentation.
# restore the old locale
setlocale(LC_CTYPE, $old_locale);
The first argument of
setlocale() gives the category, the second the
locale. The category tells in what aspect of data processing you want to apply
locale-specific rules. Category names are discussed in
LOCALE CATEGORIES and ENVIRONMENT. The locale is the name of a collection of customization information
corresponding to a particular combination of language, country or
territory, and codeset. Read on for hints on the naming of locales: not all
systems name locales as in the example.
If no second argument is provided and the category is something else than
LC_ALL, the function returns a string naming the current locale for the category. You can use this value as the second argument in a subsequent call to
setlocale().
If no second argument is provided and the category is LC_ALL, the result is implementation-dependent. It may be a string of concatenated locales names (separator also implementation-dependent) or a single locale name. Please consult your setlocale(3) for details.
If a second argument is given and it corresponds to a valid locale, the locale for the category is set to that value, and the function returns the now-current locale value. You can then use this in yet another call to
setlocale(). (In some implementations, the return value may sometimes differ from the value you gave as the second argument--think of it as an alias for the value you gave.)
As the example shows, if the second argument is an empty string, the category's locale is returned to the default specified by the corresponding environment variables. Generally, this results in a return to the default that was in force when Perl started up: changes to the environment made by the application after startup may or may not be noticed, depending on your system's C library.
If the second argument does not correspond to a valid locale, the locale for the category is not changed, and the function returns undef.
For further information about the categories, consult setlocale(3).
For locales available in your system, consult also setlocale(3) to see whether it leads to the list of available locales (search for the SEE ALSO section). If that fails, try the following command lines:
locale -a
nlsinfo
ls /usr/lib/nls/loc
ls /usr/lib/locale
ls /usr/lib/nls
and see whether they list something resembling these
en_US.ISO8859-1 de_DE.ISO8859-1 ru_RU.ISO8859-5
en_US.iso88591 de_DE.iso88591 ru_RU.iso88595
en_US de_DE ru_RU
en de ru
english german russian
english.iso88591 german.iso88591 russian.iso88595
english.roman8 russian.koi8r
Sadly, even though the calling interface for
setlocale() has been
standardized, names of locales and the directories where the configuration
resides have not been. The basic form of the name is
language_country/territory.codeset, but the latter parts after
language are not always present. The language and country are usually from the standards ISO 3166 and ISO 639, the two-letter abbreviations for the countries and the languages of the
world, respectively. The codeset part often mentions some ISO 8859
character set, the Latin codesets. For example, ISO 8859-1 is the so-called ``Western codeset'' that can be used to encode most
Western European languages. Again, there are several ways to write even the
name of that one standard. Lamentably.
Two special locales are worth particular mention: ``C'' and ``POSIX''. Currently these are effectively the same locale: the difference is mainly that the first one is defined by the C standard, the second by the POSIX standard. They define the default locale in which every program starts in the absence of locale information in its environment. (The default default locale, if you will.) Its language is (American) English and its character codeset ASCII.
NOTE: Not all systems have the ``POSIX'' locale (not all systems are POSIX-conformant), so use ``C'' when you need explicitly to specify this default locale.
You may encounter the following warning message at Perl startup:
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LC_ALL = "En_US",
LANG = (unset)
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
This means that your locale settings had LC_ALL set to ``En_US'' and LANG exists but has no value. Perl tried to believe you but could not. Instead, Perl gave up and fell back to the ``C'' locale, the default locale that is supposed to work no matter what. This usually means your locale settings were wrong, they mention locales your system has never heard of, or the locale installation in your system has problems (for example, some system files are broken or missing). There are quick and temporary fixes to these problems, as well as more thorough and lasting fixes.
The two quickest fixes are either to render Perl silent about any locale inconsistencies or to run Perl under the default locale ``C''.
Perl's moaning about locale problems can be silenced by setting the environment variable PERL_BADLANG to a non-zero value, for example ``1''. This method really just sweeps the problem under the carpet: you tell Perl to shut up even when Perl sees that something is wrong. Do not be surprised if later something locale-dependent misbehaves.
Perl can be run under the ``C'' locale by setting the environment variable LC_ALL to ``C''. This method is perhaps a bit more civilized than the PERL_BADLANG approach, but setting LC_ALL (or other locale variables) may affect other programs as well, not just Perl. In particular, external programs run from within Perl will see these changes. If you make the new settings permanent (read on), all programs you run see the changes. See ENVIRONMENT for for the full list of relevant environment variables and USING LOCALES for their effects in Perl. Effects in other programs are easily deducible. For example, the variable LC_COLLATE may well affect your sort program (or whatever the program that arranges `records' alphabetically in your system is called).
You can test out changing these variables temporarily, and if the new settings seem to help, put those settings into your shell startup files. Consult your local documentation for the exact details. For in Bourne-like shells (sh, ksh, bash, zsh):
LC_ALL=en_US.ISO8859-1
export LC_ALL
This assumes that we saw the locale ``en_US.ISO8859-1'' using the commands discussed above. We decided to try that instead of the above faulty locale ``En_US''--and in Cshish shells (csh, tcsh)
setenv LC_ALL en_US.ISO8859-1
If you do not know what shell you have, consult your local
helpdesk or the equivalent.
The slower but superior fixes are when you may be able to yourself fix the misconfiguration of your own environment variables. The
mis(sing)configuration of the whole system's locales usually requires the help of your friendly system administrator.
First, see earlier in this document about Finding locales. That tells how to find which locales are really supported--and more importantly, installed--on your system. In our example error message, environment variables affecting the locale are listed in the order of decreasing importance (and unset variables do not matter). Therefore, having LC_ALL set to ``En_US'' must have been the bad choice, as shown by the error message. First try fixing locale settings listed first.
Second, if using the listed commands you see something exactly (prefix matches do not count and case usually counts) like ``En_US'' without the quotes, then you should be okay because you are using a locale name that should be installed and available in your system. In this case, see Fixing system locale configuration.
This is when you see something like:
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LC_ALL = "En_US",
LANG = (unset)
are supported and installed on your system.
but then cannot see that ``En_US'' listed by the above-mentioned commands. You may see things like ``en_US.ISO8859-1'', but that isn't the same. In this case, try running under a locale that you can list and which somehow matches what you tried. The rules for matching locale names are a bit vague because standardization is weak in this area. See again the Finding locales about general rules.
Contact a system administrator (preferably your own) and report the exact error message you get, and ask them to read this same documentation you are now reading. They should be able to check whether there is something wrong with the locale configuration of the system. The Finding locales section is unfortunately a bit vague about the exact commands and places because these things are not that standardized.
The POSIX::localeconv() function allows you to get particulars of the
locale-dependent numeric formatting information specified by the current
LC_NUMERIC and LC_MONETARY locales. (If you just want the name of the current locale for a particular
category, use POSIX::setlocale() with a single parameter--see The setlocale function.)
use POSIX qw(locale_h);
# Get a reference to a hash of locale-dependent info
$locale_values = localeconv();
# Output sorted list of the values
for (sort keys %$locale_values) {
printf "%-20s = %s\n", $_, $locale_values->{$_}
}
localeconv() takes no
arguments, and returns a reference to a hash. The keys of this hash are variable names for formatting, such as
decimal_point and thousands_sep. The values are the corresponding, er, values. See POSIX (3) for a longer example listing the categories an implementation might be
expected to provide; some provide more and others fewer. You don't need an
explicit use locale, because
localeconv() always
observes the current locale.
Here's a simple-minded example program that rewrites its command-line parameters as integers correctly formatted in the current locale:
# See comments in previous example
require 5.004;
use POSIX qw(locale_h);
# Get some of locale's numeric formatting parameters
my ($thousands_sep, $grouping) =
@{localeconv()}{'thousands_sep', 'grouping'};
# Apply defaults if values are missing
$thousands_sep = ',' unless $thousands_sep;
# grouping and mon_grouping are packed lists
# of small integers (characters) telling the
# grouping (thousand_seps and mon_thousand_seps
# being the group dividers) of numbers and
# monetary quantities. The integers' meanings:
# 255 means no more grouping, 0 means repeat
# the previous grouping, 1-254 means use that
# as the current grouping. Grouping goes from
# right to left (low to high digits). In the
# below we cheat slightly by never using anything
# else than the first grouping (whatever that is).
if ($grouping) {
@grouping = unpack("C*", $grouping);
} else {
@grouping = (3);
}
# Format command line params for current locale
for (@ARGV) {
$_ = int; # Chop non-integer part
1 while
s/(\d)(\d{$grouping[0]}($|$thousands_sep))/$1$thousands_sep$2/;
print "$_";
}
print "\n";
The following subsections describe basic locale categories. Beyond these, some combination categories allow manipulation of more than one basic category at a time. See ENVIRONMENT for a discussion of these.
In the scope of use locale, Perl looks to the LC_COLLATE
environment variable to determine the application's notions on collation
(ordering) of characters. For example, 'b' follows 'a' in Latin alphabets,
but where do 'á' and 'å' belong? And while 'color' follows
'chocolate' in English, what about in Spanish?
The following collations all make sense and you may meet any of them if you ``use locale''.
A B C D E a b c d e
A a B b C c D d D e
a A b B c C d D e E
a b c d e A B C D E
Here is a code snippet to tell what alphanumeric characters are in the current locale, in that locale's order:
use locale;
print +(sort grep /\w/, map { chr() } 0..255), "\n";
Compare this with the characters that you see and their order if you state explicitly that the locale should be ignored:
no locale;
print +(sort grep /\w/, map { chr() } 0..255), "\n";
This machine-native collation (which is what you get unless use
locale has appeared earlier in the same block) must be used for sorting raw binary
data, whereas the locale-dependent collation of the first example is useful
for natural text.
As noted in USING LOCALES, cmp compares according to the current collation locale when use locale is in effect, but falls back to a byte-by-byte comparison for strings that
the locale says are equal. You can use POSIX::strcoll() if you don't want
this fall-back:
use POSIX qw(strcoll);
$equal_in_locale =
!strcoll("space and case ignored", "SpaceAndCaseIgnored");
$equal_in_locale will be true if the collation locale
specifies a dictionary-like ordering that ignores space characters
completely and which folds case.
If you have a single string that you want to check for ``equality in
locale'' against several others, you might think you could gain a little
efficiency by using POSIX::strxfrm() in conjunction with eq:
use POSIX qw(strxfrm);
$xfrm_string = strxfrm("Mixed-case string");
print "locale collation ignores spaces\n"
if $xfrm_string eq strxfrm("Mixed-casestring");
print "locale collation ignores hyphens\n"
if $xfrm_string eq strxfrm("Mixedcase string");
print "locale collation ignores case\n"
if $xfrm_string eq strxfrm("mixed-case string");
strxfrm() takes a string and maps it into a transformed string for use in byte-by-byte comparisons against other transformed strings during collation. ``Under the hood'', locale-affected Perl comparison operators call
strxfrm() for both operands, then do a byte-by-byte comparison of the transformed strings. By calling
strxfrm() explicitly and using a non locale-affected comparison, the example attempts to save a couple of transformations. But in fact, it doesn't save anything: Perl magic (see
Magic Variables) creates the transformed version of a string the first time it's needed in
a comparison, then keeps this version around in case it's needed again. An
example rewritten the easy way with
cmp runs just about as fast. It also copes with null characters embedded in strings; if you call
strxfrm() directly, it treats the first null it finds as a terminator. don't expect the transformed strings it produces to be portable across systems--or even from one revision of your operating system to the next. In short, don't call
strxfrm() directly: let Perl do it for you.
Note: use locale isn't shown in some of these examples because it isn't needed:
strcoll() and
strxfrm() exist only to generate locale-dependent results, and so always obey the current
LC_COLLATE locale.
In the scope of use locale, Perl obeys the LC_CTYPE locale setting. This controls the application's notion of which characters
are alphabetic. This affects Perl's \w regular expression metanotation, which stands for alphanumeric
characters--that is, alphabetic and numeric characters. (Consult the perlre manpage for more information about regular expressions.) Thanks to LC_CTYPE, depending on your locale setting, characters like 'æ', 'ð',
'ß', and 'ø' may be understood as \w characters.
The LC_CTYPE locale also provides the map used in transliterating characters between lower and uppercase. This affects the case-mapping functions--lc(), lcfirst,
uc(), and
ucfirst(); case-mapping interpolation with
\l, \L, \u, or \U in double-quoted strings and s/// substitutions; and case-independent regular expression pattern matching
using the i modifier.
Finally, LC_CTYPE affects the
POSIX character-class test functions--isalpha(),
islower(), and so on. For example, if you move from the
``C'' locale to a 7-bit Scandinavian one, you may find--possibly to your surprise--that ``|'' moves from the
ispunct() class to
isalpha().
Note:
A broken or malicious LC_CTYPE locale definition may result in clearly ineligible characters being
considered to be alphanumeric by your application. For strict matching of
(mundane) letters and digits--for example, in command strings--locale-aware
applications should use \w inside a no locale block. See SECURITY.
In the scope of use locale, Perl obeys the LC_NUMERIC locale information, which controls an application's idea of how numbers should be formatted for human readability by the
printf(),
sprintf(), and
write() functions. String-to-numeric conversion by the POSIX::strtod() function is also affected. In most implementations the only effect is to change the character used for the decimal point--perhaps from '.' to ','. These functions aren't aware of such niceties as thousands separation and so on. (See
The localeconv function if you care about these things.)
Output produced by
print() is never affected by the current locale: it is independent of whether use locale or no
locale is in effect, and corresponds to what you'd get from
printf() in the
``C'' locale. The same is true for Perl's internal conversions between numeric and string formats:
use POSIX qw(strtod);
use locale;
$n = 5/2; # Assign numeric 2.5 to $n
$a = " $n"; # Locale-independent conversion to string
print "half five is $n\n"; # Locale-independent output
printf "half five is %g\n", $n; # Locale-dependent output
print "DECIMAL POINT IS COMMA\n"
if $n == (strtod("2,5"))[0]; # Locale-dependent conversion
The
C standard defines the LC_MONETARY category, but no function that is affected by its contents. (Those with
experience of standards committees will recognize that the working group
decided to punt on the issue.) Consequently, Perl takes no notice of it. If
you really want to use LC_MONETARY, you can query its contents--see The localeconv function--and use the information that it returns in your application's own
formatting of currency amounts. However, you may well find that the
information, voluminous and complex though it may be, still does not quite
meet your requirements: currency formatting is a hard nut to crack.
Output produced by POSIX::strftime(), which builds a formatted
human-readable date/time string, is affected by the current LC_TIME
locale. Thus, in a French locale, the output produced by the %B
format element (full month name) for the first month of the year would be
``janvier''. Here's how to get a list of long month names in the current
locale:
use POSIX qw(strftime);
for (0..11) {
$long_month_name[$_] =
strftime("%B", 0, 0, 0, 1, $_, 96);
}
Note: use locale isn't needed in this example: as a function that exists only to generate locale-dependent results,
strftime() always obeys the current
LC_TIME locale.
The remaining locale category, LC_MESSAGES (possibly supplemented by others in particular implementations) is not
currently used by Perl--except possibly to affect the behavior of library
functions called by extensions outside the standard Perl distribution.
Although the main discussion of Perl security issues can be found in the perlsec manpage, a discussion of Perl's locale handling would be incomplete if it did not draw your attention to locale-dependent security issues. Locales--particularly on systems that allow unprivileged users to build their own locales--are untrustworthy. A malicious (or just plain broken) locale can make a locale-aware application give unexpected results. Here are a few possibilities:
Regular expression checks for safe file names or mail addresses using
\w may be spoofed by an LC_CTYPE locale that claims that characters such as ``>'' and ``|'' are
alphanumeric.
$dest =
"C:\U$name.$ext", may produce dangerous results if a bogus
LC_CTYPE case-mapping table is in effect.
LC_NUMERIC locale is surreptitiously changed from a dot to a comma, sprintf("%g",
0.123456e3) produces a string result of ``123,456''. Many people would interpret this
as one hundred and twenty-three thousand, four hundred and fifty-six.
LC_COLLATE locale could result in the names of students with
``D'' grades appearing ahead of those with ``A''s.
LC_MONETARY may format debits as if they were credits and vice versa if that locale has been subverted. Or it might make payments in
US dollars instead of Hong Kong dollars.
strftime() could be
manipulated to advantage by a malicious user able to subvert the
LC_DATE locale. (``Look--it says
I wasn't in the building on Sunday.'')
Such dangers are not peculiar to the locale system: any aspect of an application's environment which may be modified maliciously presents similar challenges. Similarly, they are not specific to Perl: any programming language that allows you to write programs that take account of their environment exposes you to these issues.
Perl cannot protect you from all possibilities shown in the examples--there
is no substitute for your own vigilance--but, when
use locale is in effect, Perl uses the tainting mechanism (see
the perlsec manpage) to mark string results that become locale-dependent, and which may be
untrustworthy in consequence. Here is a summary of the tainting behavior of
operators and functions that may be affected by the locale:
use locale is in effect.
Subpatterns, either delivered as a list-context result or as
$1 etc. are tainted if use locale is in effect, and the subpattern regular expression contains \w (to match an alphanumeric character), \W
(non-alphanumeric character), \s (white-space character), or \S
(non white-space character). The matched-pattern variable, $&, $`
(pre-match), $' (post-match), and $+ (last match) are also tainted if
use locale is in effect and the regular expression contains \w,
\W, \s, or \S.
=~ becomes tainted when use locale in effect if modified as a result of a substitution based on a regular
expression match involving \w, \W, \s, or \S; or of case-mapping with \l, \L,\u or \U.
use locale is in effect.
Three examples illustrate locale-dependent tainting. The first program, which ignores its locale, won't run: a value taken directly from the command line may not be used to name an output file when taint checks are enabled.
#/usr/local/bin/perl -T
# Run with taint checking
# Command line sanity check omitted...
$tainted_output_file = shift;
open(F, ">$tainted_output_file")
or warn "Open of $untainted_output_file failed: $!\n";
The program can be made to run by ``laundering'' the tainted value through a regular expression: the second example--which still ignores locale information--runs, creating the file named on its command line if it can.
#/usr/local/bin/perl -T
$tainted_output_file = shift;
$tainted_output_file =~ m%[\w/]+%;
$untainted_output_file = $&;
open(F, ">$untainted_output_file")
or warn "Open of $untainted_output_file failed: $!\n";
Compare this with a similar but locale-aware program:
#/usr/local/bin/perl -T
$tainted_output_file = shift;
use locale;
$tainted_output_file =~ m%[\w/]+%;
$localized_output_file = $&;
open(F, ">$localized_output_file")
or warn "Open of $localized_output_file failed: $!\n";
This third program fails to run because $& is tainted: it is the result
of a match involving \w while use locale is in effect.
NOTE: PERL_BADLANG only gives you a way to hide the warning message. The message tells about some problem in your system's locale support, and you should investigate what the problem is.
The following environment variables are not specific to Perl: They are part of the standardized
(ISO
C,
XPG4,
POSIX 1.c)
setlocale() method for controlling an application's opinion on data.
LC_ALL is the ``override-all'' locale environment variable. If set, it overrides
all the rest of the locale environment variables.
LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE chooses the character type locale. In the absence of both LC_ALL and LC_CTYPE, LANG
chooses the character type locale.
LC_ALL, LC_COLLATE chooses the collation (sorting) locale. In the absence of both LC_ALL and LC_COLLATE,
LANG chooses the collation locale.
LC_ALL, LC_MONETARY chooses the monetary formatting locale. In the absence of both LC_ALL and LC_MONETARY,
LANG chooses the monetary formatting locale.
LC_ALL, LC_NUMERIC chooses the numeric format locale. In the absence of both LC_ALL and LC_NUMERIC, LANG
chooses the numeric format.
LC_ALL, LC_TIME chooses the date and time formatting locale. In the absence of both LC_ALL and LC_TIME,
LANG chooses the date and time formatting locale.
LANG is the ``catch-all'' locale environment variable. If it is set, it is used
as the last resort after the overall LC_ALL and the category-specific LC_....
Versions of Perl prior to 5.004 mostly ignored locale information, generally behaving as if something similar to
the "C" locale were always in force, even if the program environment suggested
otherwise (see The setlocale function). By default, Perl still behaves this way for backward compatibility. If
you want a Perl application to pay attention to locale information, you must use the use locale
pragma (see The use locale Pragma) to instruct it to do so.
Versions of Perl from 5.002 to 5.003 did use the LC_CTYPE
information if available; that is, \w did understand what were the letters according to the locale environment variables. The problem was that the user had no control over the feature: if the
C library supported locales, Perl used them.
In versions of Perl prior to 5.004, per-locale collation was possible using
the I18N::Collate library module. This module is now mildly obsolete and should be avoided in
new applications. The LC_COLLATE
functionality is now integrated into the Perl core language: One can use
locale-specific scalar data completely normally with use locale, so there is no longer any need to juggle with the scalar references of
I18N::Collate.
Comparing and sorting by locale is usually slower than the default sorting; slow-downs of two to four times have been observed. It will also consume more memory: once a Perl scalar variable has participated in any string comparison or sorting operation obeying the locale collation rules, it will take 3-15 times more memory than before. (The exact multiplier depends on the string's contents, the operating system and the locale.) These downsides are dictated more by the operating system's implementation of the locale system than by Perl.
Formats are the only part of Perl that unconditionally use information from a program's locale; if a program's environment specifies an
LC_NUMERIC locale, it is always used to specify the decimal point character in formatted output. Formatted output cannot be controlled by
use locale because the pragma is tied to the block structure of the program, and, for
historical reasons, formats exist outside that block structure.
There is a large collection of locale definitions at
ftp://dkuug.dk/i18n/WG15-collection. You should be aware that it is unsupported, and is not claimed to be fit
for any purpose. If your system allows installation of arbitrary locales,
you may find the definitions useful as they are, or as a basis for the
development of your own locales.
``Internationalization'' is often abbreviated as i18n because its first and last letters are separated by eighteen others. (You may guess why the internalin ... internaliti ... i18n tends to get abbreviated.) In the same way, ``localization'' is often abbreviated to l10n.
Internationalization, as defined in the C and POSIX standards, can be criticized as incomplete, ungainly, and having too large a granularity. (Locales apply to a whole process, when it would arguably be more useful to have them apply to a single thread, window group, or whatever.) They also have a tendency, like standards groups, to divide the world into nations, when we all know that the world can equally well be divided into bankers, bikers, gamers, and so on. But, for now, it's the only standard we've got. This may be construed as a bug.
In certain systems, the operating system's locale support is broken and
cannot be fixed or used by Perl. Such deficiencies can and will result in
mysterious hangs and/or Perl core dumps when the
use locale is in effect. When confronted with such a system, please report in
excruciating detail to <perlbug@perl.com>, and complain to your vendor: bug fixes may exist for these problems
in your operating system. Sometimes such bug fixes are called an operating
system upgrade.
POSIX (3)
POSIX (3)
POSIX (3)
POSIX (3)
POSIX (3)
POSIX (3),
POSIX (3)
POSIX (3)
POSIX (3),
POSIX (3)
POSIX (3)
POSIX (3),
POSIX (3)
POSIX (3)
POSIX (3),
POSIX (3)
Jarkko Hietaniemi's original perli18n.pod heavily hacked by Dominic Dunlop, assisted by the perl5-porters. Prose worked over a bit by Tom Christiansen.
Last update: Thu Jun 11 08:44:13 MDT 1998
If rather than formatting bugs, you encounter substantive content errors in these documents, such as mistakes in the explanations or code, please use the perlbug utility included with the Perl distribution.