DESCRIPTION

The nl_langinfo() and nl_langinfo_l() functions provide access to locale information in a more flexible way than localeconv(3). nl_langinfo() returns a string which is the value corresponding to item in the program's current global locale. nl_langinfo() returns a string which is the value corresponding to item for the locale identified by the locale object locale, which was previously created by newlocale(1). Individual and additional elements of the locale categories can be queried.

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

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

On success, these functions return a pointer to a string which is the value corresponding to item in the specified locale.

If no locale has been selected by setlocale(3) for the appropriate category, nl_langinfo() return a pointer to the corresponding string in the "C" locale. The same is true of nl_langinfo_l() if locale specifies a locale where langinfo data is not defined.

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

The pointer returned by these functions may point to static data that may be overwritten, or the pointer itself may be invalidated, by a subsequent call to nl_langinfo(), nl_langinfo_l(), or setlocale(3). The same statements apply to nl_langinfo_l() if the locale object referred to by locale is freed or modified by freelocale(3) or newlocale(3).

POSIX specifies that the application may not modify the string returned by these functions.

ATTRIBUTES

For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).

CONFORMING TO

POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, SUSv2.

NOTES

The behavior of nl_langinfo_l() is undefined if locale is the special locale object LC_GLOBAL_LOCALE or is not a valid locale object handle.

EXAMPLE

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

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

int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "");
    setlocale(LC_NUMERIC, "");

    printf("%s\n", nl_langinfo(CODESET));
    printf("%s\n", nl_langinfo(RADIXCHAR));

    exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}

SEE ALSO

locale(1), localeconv(3), setlocale(3), charsets(7), locale(7)

The GNU C Library Reference Manual