nl_langinfo (3)

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NAME

nl_langinfo - query language and locale information

SYNOPSIS

#include <langinfo.h>

char *nl_langinfo(nl_item item);

DESCRIPTION

The nl_langinfo() function provides access to locale information in a more flexible way than localeconv(3) does. Individual and additional elements of the locale categories can be queried. setlocale(3) needs to be executed with proper arguments before.

Examples for the locale elements that can be specified in item using the constants defined in <langinfo.h> are:

CODESET (LC_CTYPE)

Return a string with the name of the character encoding used in the selected locale, such as "UTF-8", "ISO-8859-1", or "ANSI_X3.4-1968" (better known as US-ASCII). This is the same string that you get with "locale charmap". For a list of character encoding names, try "locale -m", cf. locale(1).

D_T_FMT (LC_TIME)

Return a string that can be used as a format string for strftime(3) to represent time and date in a locale-specific way.

D_FMT (LC_TIME)

Return a string that can be used as a format string for strftime(3) to represent a date in a locale-specific way.

T_FMT (LC_TIME)

Return a string that can be used as a format string for strftime(3) to represent a time in a locale-specific way.

DAY_{1-7} (LC_TIME)

Return name of the n-th day of the week. [Warning: this follows the US convention DAY_1 = Sunday, not the international convention (ISO 8601) that Monday is the first day of the week.]

ABDAY_{1-7} (LC_TIME)

Return abbreviated name of the n-th day of the week.

MON_{1-12} (LC_TIME)

Return name of the n-th month.

ABMON_{1-12} (LC_TIME)

Return abbreviated name of the n-th month.

RADIXCHAR (LC_NUMERIC)

Return radix character (decimal dot, decimal comma, etc.).

THOUSEP (LC_NUMERIC)

Return separator character for thousands (groups of three digits).

YESEXPR (LC_MESSAGES)

Return a regular expression that can be used with the regex(3) function to recognize a positive response to a yes/no question.

NOEXPR (LC_MESSAGES)

Return a regular expression that can be used with the regex(3) function to recognize a negative response to a yes/no question.

CRNCYSTR (LC_MONETARY)

Return the currency symbol, preceded by "-" if the symbol should appear before the value, "+" if the symbol should appear after the value, or "." if the symbol should replace the radix character.

The above list covers just some examples of items that can be requested. For a more detailed list, consult The GNU C Library Reference Manual.

RETURN VALUE

If no locale has been selected by setlocale(3) for the appropriate category, nl_langinfo() returns a pointer to the corresponding string in the "C" locale.

If item is not valid, a pointer to an empty string is returned.

This pointer may point to static data that may be overwritten on the next call to nl_langinfo() or setlocale(3).

CONFORMING TO

SUSv2, POSIX.1-2001.

EXAMPLE

The following program sets the character type locale according to the environment and queries the terminal character set.

#include <langinfo.h>
#include <locale.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    setlocale(LC_CTYPE,"");
    printf("%s\n",nl_langinfo(CODESET));
    exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}

SEE ALSO

locale(1), localeconv(3), setlocale(3), charsets(7), locale(7)
The GNU C Library Reference Manual

COLOPHON

This page is part of release 3.54 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

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