@node setlocale @section @code{setlocale} @findex setlocale POSIX specification:@* @url{http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/setlocale.html} Gnulib module: setlocale Portability problems fixed by Gnulib: @itemize @item On Windows platforms (excluding Cygwin), @code{setlocale(@var{category},NULL)} ignores the environment variables @code{LC_ALL}, @code{@var{category}}, and @code{LANG}. @item On Windows platforms (excluding Cygwin) and Cygwin 1.5.x, @code{setlocale(LC_ALL,@var{name})} succeeds and sets the LC_CTYPE category to @samp{C} when it does not support the encoding, instead of failing. @item On Windows platforms (excluding Cygwin), @code{setlocale} understands different locale names, that are not based on ISO 639 language names and ISO 3166 country names. @end itemize Portability problems not fixed by Gnulib: @itemize @item On Cygwin 1.5.x, which doesn't have locales, @code{setlocale(LC_ALL,NULL)} always returns @code{"C"}. @item On Cygwin 1.7.0, only the charset portion of a locale designation is honored. @item On OpenBSD, @code{setlocale(LC_ALL,"")} will only update categories that are deemed appropriate for the @code{LC_ALL} environment value, even if there are other categories set to different values in the environment. In addition any value is accepted for @code{LC_CTYPE}, and so NULL is never returned to indicate a failure to set locale. To verify category values, each category must be set individually with @code{setlocale(LC_COLLATE,"")} etc. @end itemize