Locale - ArchWiki

# Locale

Locales are used by glibc and other locale-aware programs or libraries for rendering text, correctly displaying regional monetary values, time and date formats, alphabetic idiosyncrasies, and other locale-specific standards.

## Generating locales

Before a locale can be enabled on the system, it has to be generated. The current generated/available locales can be viewed with:

    $ locale -a

The locales that can be generated are listed in the `/etc/locale.gen` file: their names are defined using the format `[language][_TERRITORY][.CODESET][@modifier]`. To generate a locale, first uncomment the corresponding line in the file (or comment to remove); when doing this, also consider the localizations that other users on the system might need. For example, for American-English uncomment `en_US.UTF.8 UTF-8`. When done, save the file and generate the uncommented locale(s) by executing:

    # locale-gen

Note: `locale-gen` also runs with every update of glibc.

## Setting the locale

To display the currently set locale and its related environmental settings, type:

    $ locale

The locale to be used, chosen among the previously generated ones, is set in `locale.conf` files, each of which must contain a new-line separated list of environment variable assignments, for example:

    locale.conf

    LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
    LC_COLLATE=C
    LC_TIME=en_DK.UTF-8

- A system-wide locale can be set by creating or editing `/etc/locale.conf`. The same result can be obtained with the localectl command:

      # localectl set-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8

  See `man 1 localectl` for details.

  Tip: During system installation, if the output of locale is to your liking, you can save a little time by doing: `locale > /etc/locale.conf` while chrooted.

- The system-wide locale can be overridden in each user session by creating or editing `~/.config/locale.conf` (or, in general, `$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/locale.conf` or `$HOME/.config/locale.conf`).

  Tip:
  - This can also allow keeping the logs in `/var/log` in English while using the local language in the user environment.
  - You can create a `/etc/skel/.config/locale.conf` file so that any new users added using useradd and the `-m` option will have `~/.config/locale.conf` automatically generated.

The precedence of these `locale.conf` files is defined in `/etc/profile.d/locale.sh`.

See #Supported variables, `man 5 locale.conf` and related for details.

Once `locale.conf` files have been created or edited, their new values will take effect after rebooting the system and will be set for individual sessions at login. To have the current environment use the new settings, do:

    $ source /etc/profile.d/locale.sh

### Other uses

Locale variables can also be defined with the standard methods as explained in Environment variables.

For example, in order to test or debug a particular application during development, it could be launched with something like:

    $ LANG="en_AU.UTF-8" ./my_application.sh

## Supported variables

`locale.conf` files support the following environment variables:

- LANG
- LANGUAGE
- `LC_CTYPE`
- `LC_NUMERIC`
- LC_TIME
- LC_COLLATE
- `LC_MONETARY`
- `LC_MESSAGES`
- `LC_PAPER`
- `LC_NAME`
- `LC_ADDRESS`
- `LC_TELEPHONE`
- `LC_MEASUREMENT`
- `LC_IDENTIFICATION`

### LANG: default locale

The locale set for this variable will be used for all the `LC_*` variables that are not explicitly set.

### LANGUAGE: fallback locales

Programs which use gettext for translations respect the `LANGUAGE` option in addition to the usual variables. This allows users to specify a list of locales that will be used in that order. If a translation for the preferred locale is unavailable, another from a similar locale will be used instead of the default. For example, an Australian user might want to fall back to British rather than US spelling:

    locale.conf

    LANG=en_AU
    LANGUAGE=en_AU:en_GB:en

### LC_TIME: date and time format

If `LC_TIME` is set to `en_US.UTF-8`, for example, the date format will be "MM/DD/YYYY". If wanting to use the the ISO 8601 date format of "YYYY-MM-DD" use:

    locale.conf

    LC_TIME=en_DK.UTF-8

### LC_COLLATE: collation

This variable governs the collation rules used for sorting and regular expressions.

Setting the value to `C` can for example make the ls command sort dotfiles first, followed by uppercase and lowercase filenames:

    locale.conf

    LC_COLLATE=C

See also [1].

To get around potential issues, Arch used to set `LC_COLLATE=C` in `/etc/profile`, but this method is now deprecated.

## LC_ALL

The locale set for this variable will always override `LANG` and all the other `LC_*` variables, whether they are set or not.

`LC_ALL` is the only `LC_*` variable, which cannot be set in `locale.conf` files: it is meant to be used only for testing or troubleshooting purposes, for example in `/etc/profile`.

## Customizing locales

The factual accuracy of this article or section is disputed.

Reason: Modified locales will not survive the upgrade of glibc because the relevant file is not in the backup field in the PKGBUILD. Custom locales should be created instead. (Discuss)

Locales are defined in text files located in `/usr/share/i18n/locales/` and can be edited to adapt to particular needs.

After editing a locale file, do not forget to re-generate the locales for the changes to take effect after reboot.

### Setting the first day of the week

In many countries the first day of the week is Monday. To adjust this, change or add the following lines:

    /usr/share/i18n/locales/chosen_locale

    LC_TIME
    [...]
    week            7;19971130;5
    first_weekday   2
    first_workday   2

## Tips and tricks

### Launch application with different locale from terminal

For example launch Abiword with Hebrew locale:

    $ env LANG=he_IL.UTF-8 abiword &

### Launch application with different locale from desktop

Copy the .desktop file to the user home directory so it will take precedence:

    $ cp /usr/share/applications/abiword.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/

Edit the `Exec` command:

    ~/.local/share/applications/abiword.desktop

    Exec=env LANG=he_IL.UTF-8 abiword %U

## Troubleshooting

### My terminal does not support UTF-8

The following lists some (not all) terminals that support UTF-8:

- gnustep-terminal
- konsole
- mlterm
- rxvt-unicode
- st
- vte-based terminals
- xterm - Must be run with the argument `-u8`. Alternatively run uxterm, which is provided by the package xterm.

#### Gnome-terminal or rxvt-unicode does not support UTF-8

You need to launch these applications from a UTF-8 locale or they will drop UTF-8 support. Enable the `en_US.UTF-8` locale (or your local UTF-8 alternative) per the instructions above and set it as the default locale, then reboot.

### My system is still using wrong language

It is possible that the environment variables are redefined in other files than `locale.conf`, for example `~/.pam_environment` is used by GNOME. See Environment variables#Defining variables for details.

## See also

- Gentoo Linux Localization Guide
- Gentoo Wiki Archives: Locales
- ICU's interactive collation testing
- Free Standards Group Open Internationalisation Initiative
- The Single UNIX Specification definition of Locale by The Open Group
- Locale environment variables

Category:

- Internationalization