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Thelocale module opens access to the POSIX localedatabase and functionality. The POSIX locale mechanism allowsprogrammers to deal with certain cultural issues in an application,without requiring the programmer to know all the specifics of eachcountry where the software is executed.
Thelocale module is implemented on top of the_locale module, which in turn uses anANSI C locale implementation if available.
Thelocale module defines the following exception andfunctions:
(language code,encoding), orNone. If it is a tuple, it is converted to a string using the locale aliasing engine. Iflocale is given and notNone,setlocale() modifies the locale setting for thecategory. The available categories are listed in the data description below. The value is the name of a locale. An empty string specifies the user's default settings. If the modification of the locale fails, the exceptionError is raised. If successful, the new locale setting is returned.Iflocale is omitted orNone, the current setting forcategory is returned.
setlocale() is not thread safe on most systems. Applications typically start with a call of
import localelocale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, '')
This sets the locale for all categories to the user's default setting (typically specified in theLANG environment variable). If the locale is not changed thereafter, using multithreading should not cause problems.
Changed in version 2.0:Added support for tuple values of thelocale parameter.
| Key | Category | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
LC_NUMERIC | 'decimal_point' | Decimal point character. |
'grouping' | Sequence of numbers specifying which relative positions the'thousands_sep' is expected. If the sequence is terminated withCHAR_MAX, no further grouping is performed. If the sequence terminates with a0, the last group size is repeatedly used. | |
'thousands_sep' | Character used between groups. | |
LC_MONETARY | 'int_curr_symbol' | International currency symbol. |
'currency_symbol' | Local currency symbol. | |
'mon_decimal_point' | Decimal point used for monetary values. | |
'mon_thousands_sep' | Group separator used for monetary values. | |
'mon_grouping' | Equivalent to'grouping', used for monetary values. | |
'positive_sign' | Symbol used to annotate a positive monetary value. | |
'negative_sign' | Symbol used to annotate a nnegative monetary value. | |
'frac_digits' | Number of fractional digits used in local formatting of monetary values. | |
'int_frac_digits' | Number of fractional digits used in international formatting of monetary values. |
The possible values for'p_sign_posn' and'n_sign_posn' are given below.
| Value | Explanation |
|---|---|
0 | Currency and value are surrounded by parentheses. |
1 | The sign should precede the value and currency symbol. |
2 | The sign should follow the value and currency symbol. |
3 | The sign should immediately precede the value. |
4 | The sign should immediately follow the value. |
LC_MAX | Nothing is specified in this locale. |
Return some locale-specific information as a string. This function isnot available on all systems, and the set of possible options mightalso vary across platforms. The possible argument values are numbers,for which symbolic constants are available in the locale module.
(language code,encoding).According to POSIX, a program which has not calledsetlocale(LC_ALL, '') runs using the portable'C' locale. Callingsetlocale(LC_ALL, '') lets it use the default locale as defined by theLANG variable. Since we do not want to interfere with the current locale setting we thus emulate the behavior in the way described above.
To maintain compatibility with other platforms, not only theLANG variable is tested, but a list of variables given as envvars parameter. The first found to be defined will be used.envvars defaults to the search path used in GNU gettext; it must always contain the variable name "LANG". The GNU gettext search path contains'LANGUAGE','LC_ALL','LC_CTYPE', and'LANG', in that order.
Except for the code'C', the language code corresponds toRFC 1766.language code andencoding may beNone if their values cannot be determined.New in version 2.0.
Except for the code'C', the language code corresponds toRFC 1766.language code andencoding may beNone if their values cannot be determined.New in version 2.0.
If the given encoding is not known, the function defaults to the default encoding for the locale code just likesetlocale().New in version 2.0.
The default setting is determined by callinggetdefaultlocale().category defaults toLC_ALL.New in version 2.0.
0, depending on whetherstring1 collates before or afterstring2 or is equal to it.% operator. For floating point values, the decimal point is modified if appropriate. Ifgrouping is true, also takes the grouping into account.str(float), but takes the decimal point into account.Thenl_langinfo function accepts one of the following keys.Most descriptions are taken from the corresponding description in theGNU C library.
Most locales do not define this value. An example of a locale whichdoes define this value is the Japanese one. In Japan, the traditionalrepresentation of dates includes the name of the era corresponding tothe then-emperor's reign.
Normally it should not be necessary to use this value directly.Specifying theE modifier in their format strings causes thestrftime function to use this information. The format of thereturned string is not specified, and therefore you should not assumeknowledge of it on different systems.
Example:
>>> import locale>>> loc = locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL) # get current locale>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'de') # use German locale>>> locale.strcoll('f\xe4n', 'foo') # compare a string containing an umlaut >>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, '') # use user's preferred locale>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'C') # use default (C) locale>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, loc) # restore saved locale | | | Python Library Reference | | | |