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| <h3 class="section">7.1 What Effects a Locale Has</h3> |
| |
| <p>Each locale specifies conventions for several purposes, including the |
| following: |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li>What multibyte character sequences are valid, and how they are |
| interpreted (see <a href="Character-Set-Handling.html#Character-Set-Handling">Character Set Handling</a>). |
| |
| <li>Classification of which characters in the local character set are |
| considered alphabetic, and upper- and lower-case conversion conventions |
| (see <a href="Character-Handling.html#Character-Handling">Character Handling</a>). |
| |
| <li>The collating sequence for the local language and character set |
| (see <a href="Collation-Functions.html#Collation-Functions">Collation Functions</a>). |
| |
| <li>Formatting of numbers and currency amounts (see <a href="General-Numeric.html#General-Numeric">General Numeric</a>). |
| |
| <li>Formatting of dates and times (see <a href="Formatting-Calendar-Time.html#Formatting-Calendar-Time">Formatting Calendar Time</a>). |
| |
| <li>What language to use for output, including error messages |
| (see <a href="Message-Translation.html#Message-Translation">Message Translation</a>). |
| |
| <li>What language to use for user answers to yes-or-no questions |
| (see <a href="Yes_002dor_002dNo-Questions.html#Yes_002dor_002dNo-Questions">Yes-or-No Questions</a>). |
| |
| <li>What language to use for more complex user input. |
| (The C library doesn't yet help you implement this.) |
| </ul> |
| |
| <p>Some aspects of adapting to the specified locale are handled |
| automatically by the library subroutines. For example, all your program |
| needs to do in order to use the collating sequence of the chosen locale |
| is to use <code>strcoll</code> or <code>strxfrm</code> to compare strings. |
| |
| <p>Other aspects of locales are beyond the comprehension of the library. |
| For example, the library can't automatically translate your program's |
| output messages into other languages. The only way you can support |
| output in the user's favorite language is to program this more or less |
| by hand. The C library provides functions to handle translations for |
| multiple languages easily. |
| |
| <p>This chapter discusses the mechanism by which you can modify the current |
| locale. The effects of the current locale on specific library functions |
| are discussed in more detail in the descriptions of those functions. |
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