blob: c5c216c783f87f0367df38edad034e7e2b7ffc79 [file] [log] [blame]
<!--
Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed
with this work for additional information regarding copyright
ownership. The ASF licenses this file to you under the Apache
License, Version 2.0 (the License); you may not use this file
except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of
the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or
implied. See the License for the specific language governing
permissions and limitations under the License.
Copyright 1999-2007 Rogue Wave Software, Inc.
-->
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>The C Locale</TITLE>
<LINK REL=StyleSheet HREF="../rw.css" TYPE="text/css" TITLE="Apache stdcxx Stylesheet"></HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR=#FFFFFF>
<A HREF="24.html"><IMG SRC="images/bprev.gif" WIDTH=20 HEIGHT=21 ALT="Previous file" BORDER=O></A><A HREF="noframes.html"><IMG SRC="images/btop.gif" WIDTH=56 HEIGHT=21 ALT="Top of Document" BORDER=O></A><A HREF="booktoc.html"><IMG SRC="images/btoc.gif" WIDTH=56 HEIGHT=21 ALT="Contents" BORDER=O></A><A HREF="tindex.html"><IMG SRC="images/bindex.gif" WIDTH=56 HEIGHT=21 ALT="Index page" BORDER=O></A><A HREF="24-2.html"><IMG SRC="images/bnext.gif" WIDTH=25 HEIGHT=21 ALT="Next file" BORDER=O></A><DIV CLASS="DOCUMENTNAME"><B>Apache C++ Standard Library User's Guide</B></DIV>
<H2>24.1 The C Locale</H2>
<A NAME="idx506"><!></A>
<P>All the culture and language dependencies discussed in the previous section need to be represented in an operating system. This information is usually represented in a kind of language table, called a <I>locale</I>.</P>
<A NAME="idx507"><!></A>
<P>The X/Open consortium has standardized a variety of services for Native Language Support (NLS<I>)</I> in the programming language C. This standard is commonly known as XPG4. Internationalization services as well as localization support are included in X/Open's <I>Native Language Support</I>. The description below is based on this standard.</P>
<A NAME="idx508"><!></A>
<P>According to XPG4, the C locale is composed of several <I>categories</I>, which are given in <A HREF="24-1.html#Table&nbsp;24">Table&nbsp;24</A>.</P>
<A NAME="idx509"><!></A>
<H4><A NAME="Table&nbsp;24">Table&nbsp;24: Categories of the C locale&nbsp;</A></H4>
<TABLE BORDER="1" CELLPADDING="3" CELLSPACING="3">
<tr><td valign=top><B>Category</B>
</td><td valign=top><B>Content</B>
</td></tr>
<tr><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE"><SAMP>LC_NUMERIC</SAMP></P>
</td><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE">Rules and symbols for numbers</P>
</td></tr>
<tr><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE"><SAMP>LC_TIME</SAMP></P>
</td><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE">Values for date and time information</P>
</td></tr>
<tr><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE"><SAMP>LC_MONETARY</SAMP></P>
</td><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE">Rules and symbols for monetary information</P>
</td></tr>
<tr><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE"><SAMP>LC_CTYPE</SAMP></P>
</td><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE">Character classification and case conversion</P>
</td></tr>
<tr><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE"><SAMP>LC_COLLATE</SAMP></P>
</td><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE">Collation sequence</P>
</td></tr>
<tr><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE"><SAMP>LC_MESSAGES</SAMP></P>
</td><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE">Formats and values of messages</P>
</td></tr>
</TABLE>
<A NAME="idx510"><!></A>
<P>The external representation of a C locale is usually a <I>file</I> in UNIX. Other operating systems may use other representations. The external representation is transformed into an internal memory representation by calling the function <SAMP>setlocale()</SAMP>, as shown in <A HREF="24-1.html#Figure&nbsp;4">Figure&nbsp;4</A>:</P>
<H4><A NAME="Figure&nbsp;4">Figure&nbsp;4: Transformation of a C locale from external to internal representation</A></H4>
<P><IMG SRC="images/locfig4.gif" WIDTH=583 HEIGHT=302></P>
<P>Inside a program, the C locale is represented by one or more global data structures. The C library provides a set of functions that use information from those global data structures to adapt their behavior to local conventions. Examples of these functions and the information they cover are listed in <A HREF="24-1.html#Table&nbsp;25">Table&nbsp;25</A>:</P>
<A NAME="idx511"><!></A>
<H4><A NAME="Table&nbsp;25">Table&nbsp;25: C locale functions and the information they cover&nbsp;</A></H4>
<TABLE BORDER="1" CELLPADDING="3" CELLSPACING="3">
<tr><td valign=top><B>C Locale Function</B>
</td><td valign=top><B>Information Covered</B>
</td></tr>
<tr><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE"><SAMP>setlocale()</SAMP>, ...</P>
</td><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE">Locale initialization and </P>
<P CLASS="TABLE">language information</P>
</td></tr>
<tr><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE"><SAMP>isalpha()</SAMP>, <SAMP>isupper()</SAMP>, <SAMP>isdigit()</SAMP>, ...</P>
</td><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE">Character classification</P>
</td></tr>
<tr><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE"><SAMP>strftime()</SAMP>, ...</P>
</td><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE">Date and time functions</P>
</td></tr>
<tr><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE"><SAMP>strfmon()</SAMP></P>
</td><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE">Monetary functions</P>
</td></tr>
<tr><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE"><SAMP>printf(), scanf()</SAMP>, ...</P>
</td><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE">Number parsing and formatting</P>
</td></tr>
<tr><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE"><SAMP>strcoll()</SAMP>, <SAMP>wcscoll()</SAMP>, ...</P>
</td><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE">String collation</P>
</td></tr>
<tr><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE"><SAMP>mblen()</SAMP>, <SAMP>mbtowc()</SAMP>, <SAMP>wctomb()</SAMP>, ...</P>
</td><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE">Multibyte functions</P>
</td></tr>
<tr><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE"><SAMP>catopen()</SAMP>, <SAMP>catgets()</SAMP>, <SAMP>catclose()</SAMP></P>
</td><td valign=top><P CLASS="TABLE">Message retrieval</P>
</td></tr>
</TABLE>
<BR>
<HR>
<A HREF="24.html"><IMG SRC="images/bprev.gif" WIDTH=20 HEIGHT=21 ALT="Previous file" BORDER=O></A><A HREF="noframes.html"><IMG SRC="images/btop.gif" WIDTH=56 HEIGHT=21 ALT="Top of Document" BORDER=O></A><A HREF="booktoc.html"><IMG SRC="images/btoc.gif" WIDTH=56 HEIGHT=21 ALT="Contents" BORDER=O></A><A HREF="tindex.html"><IMG SRC="images/bindex.gif" WIDTH=56 HEIGHT=21 ALT="Index page" BORDER=O></A><A HREF="24-2.html"><IMG SRC="images/bnext.gif" WIDTH=20 HEIGHT=21 ALT="Next file" BORDER=O></A>
<!-- Google Analytics tracking code -->
<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
_uacct = "UA-1775151-1";
urchinTracker();
</script>
<!-- end of Google Analytics tracking code -->
</BODY>
</HTML>