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.\" References consulted:
.\"   GNU glibc-2 manual
.\"   OpenGroup's Single UNIX specification http://www.UNIX-systems.org/online.html
.\"
.\" Corrected prototype, 2002-10-18, aeb
.\"
.TH NL_LANGINFO 3  2015-07-31 "GNU" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
nl_langinfo, nl_langinfo_l \- query language and locale information
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.B #include <langinfo.h>
.sp
.BI "char *nl_langinfo(nl_item " item );
.sp
.BI "char *nl_langinfo_l(nl_item " item ", locale_t " locale );
.fi
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
.BR nl_langinfo ()
and
.BR nl_langinfo_l ()
functions provide access to locale information
in a more flexible way than
.BR localeconv (3).
.BR nl_langinfo()
returns a string which is the value corresponding to
\fIitem\fP in the program's current global
locale.
.BR nl_langinfo()
returns a string which is the value corresponding to \fIitem\fP
for the locale identified by the locale object \fIlocale\fP,
which was previously created by
.BR newlocale (1).
Individual and additional elements of the locale categories can
be queried.
.BR setlocale (3)
needs to be executed with proper arguments before.
.PP
Examples for the locale elements that can be specified in \fIitem\fP
using the constants defined in \fI<langinfo.h>\fP are:
.TP
.BR CODESET \ (LC_CTYPE)
Return a string with the name of the character encoding used in the
selected locale, such as "UTF-8", "ISO-8859-1", or "ANSI_X3.4-1968"
(better known as US-ASCII).
This is the same string that you get with
"locale charmap".
For a list of character encoding names,
try "locale \-m", cf.\&
.BR locale (1).
.TP
.BR D_T_FMT \ (LC_TIME)
Return a string that can be used as a format string for
.BR strftime (3)
to represent time and date in a locale-specific way.
.TP
.BR D_FMT \ (LC_TIME)
Return a string that can be used as a format string for
.BR strftime (3)
to represent a date in a locale-specific way.
.TP
.BR T_FMT \ (LC_TIME)
Return a string that can be used as a format string for
.BR strftime (3)
to represent a time in a locale-specific way.
.TP
.BR DAY_ "{1\(en7} (LC_TIME)"
Return name of the \fIn\fP-th day of the week. [Warning: this follows
the US convention DAY_1 = Sunday, not the international convention
(ISO 8601) that Monday is the first day of the week.]
.TP
.BR ABDAY_ "{1\(en7} (LC_TIME)"
Return abbreviated name of the \fIn\fP-th day of the week.
.TP
.BR MON_ "{1\(en12} (LC_TIME)"
Return name of the \fIn\fP-th month.
.TP
.BR ABMON_ "{1\(en12} (LC_TIME)"
Return abbreviated name of the \fIn\fP-th month.
.TP
.BR RADIXCHAR \ (LC_NUMERIC)
Return radix character (decimal dot, decimal comma, etc.).
.TP
.BR THOUSEP \ (LC_NUMERIC)
Return separator character for thousands (groups of three digits).
.TP
.BR YESEXPR \ (LC_MESSAGES)
Return a regular expression that can be used with the
.BR regex (3)
function to recognize a positive response to a yes/no question.
.TP
.BR NOEXPR \ (LC_MESSAGES)
Return a regular expression that can be used with the
.BR regex (3)
function to recognize a negative response to a yes/no question.
.TP
.BR CRNCYSTR \ (LC_MONETARY)
Return the currency symbol, preceded by "\-" if the symbol should
appear before the value, "+" if the symbol should appear after the
value, or "." if the symbol should replace the radix character.
.PP
The above list covers just some examples of items that can be requested.
For a more detailed list, consult
.IR "The GNU C Library Reference Manual" .
.SH RETURN VALUE
On success, these functions return a pointer to a string which
is the value corresponding to
.I item
in the specified locale.

If no locale has been selected by
.BR setlocale (3)
for the appropriate category,
.BR nl_langinfo ()
return a pointer to the corresponding string in the "C" locale.
The same is true of
.BR nl_langinfo_l ()
if
.I locale
specifies a locale where
.I langinfo
data is not defined.
.PP
If \fIitem\fP is not valid, a pointer to an empty string is returned.
.PP
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
.BR nl_langinfo (),
.BR nl_langinfo_l (),
or
.BR setlocale (3).
The same statements apply to
.BR nl_langinfo_l ()
if the locale object referred to by
.I locale
is freed or modified by
.BR freelocale (3)
or
.BR newlocale (3).

POSIX specifies that the application may not modify
the string returned by these functions.
.SH ATTRIBUTES
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see
.BR attributes (7).
.TS
allbox;
lb lb lb
l l l.
Interface	Attribute	Value
T{
.BR nl_langinfo ()
T}	Thread safety	MT-Safe locale
.TE
.SH CONFORMING TO
POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, SUSv2.
.SH NOTES
The behavior of
.BR nl_langinfo_l ()
is undefined if
.I locale
is the special locale object
.BR LC_GLOBAL_LOCALE
or is not a valid locale object handle.
.SH 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.
.LP
.nf
#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);
}
.fi
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR locale (1),
.BR localeconv (3),
.BR setlocale (3),
.BR charsets (7),
.BR locale (7)
.br
The GNU C Library Reference Manual
.SH COLOPHON
This page is part of release 4.10 of the Linux
.I man-pages
project.
A description of the project,
information about reporting bugs,
and the latest version of this page,
can be found at
\%https://www.kernel.org/doc/man\-pages/.