C library function - setlocale()

Description

The C library function char *setlocale(int category, const char *locale) sets or reads location dependent information.

Declaration

Following is the declaration for setlocale() function.

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

Parameters

category − This is a named constant specifying the category of the functions affected by the locale setting.
- LC_ALL for all of the below.
- LC_COLLATE for string comparison. See strcoll().
- LC_CTYPE for character classification and conversion. For example − strtoupper().
- LC_MONETARY for monetary formatting for localeconv().
- LC_NUMERIC for decimal separator for localeconv().
- LC_TIME for date and time formatting with strftime().
- LC_MESSAGES for system responses.
locale − If locale is NULL or the empty string "", the locale names will be set from the values of environment variables with the same names as the above categories.

Return Value

A successful call to setlocale() returns an opaque string that corresponds to the locale set. The return value is NULL if the request cannot be honored.

Example

The following example shows the usage of setlocale() function.

Live Demo

#include <locale.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>

int main () {
   time_t currtime;
   struct tm *timer;
   char buffer[80];

   time( &currtime );
   timer = localtime( &currtime );

   printf("Locale is: %s\n", setlocale(LC_ALL, "en_GB"));
   strftime(buffer,80,"%c", timer );
   printf("Date is: %s\n", buffer);

  
   printf("Locale is: %s\n", setlocale(LC_ALL, "de_DE"));
   strftime(buffer,80,"%c", timer );
   printf("Date is: %s\n", buffer);

   return(0);
}

Let us compile and run the above program that will produce the following result −

Locale is: en_GB                                                            
Date is: Fri 05 Dec 2014 10:35:02 UTC                                       
Locale is: de_DE                                                            
Date is: Fr 05 Dez 2014 10:35:02 UTC

locale_h.htm