LOCALEDEF(1)            FreeBSD General Commands Manual           LOCALEDEF(1)

NAME
     localedef - define locale environment

SYNOPSIS
     localedef [-bcDlUv] [-f charmap] [-i sourcefile] [-u codeset]
               [-w widthfile] localename

DESCRIPTION
     The localedef utility converts source definitions for locale categories
     into a format usable by the functions and utilities whose operational
     behavior is determined by the setting of the locale environment
     variables; see environ(7).

     The utility reads source definitions for one or more locale categories
     belonging to the same locale from the file named in the -i option (if
     specified) or from standard input.

     Each category source definition is identified by the corresponding
     environment variable name and terminated by an END category-name
     statement.  The following categories are supported:

     LC_CTYPE         Defines character classification and case conversion.

     LC_COLLATE       Defines collation rules.

     LC_MONETARY      Defines the format and symbols used in formatting of
                      monetary information.

     LC_NUMERIC       Defines the decimal delimiter, grouping and grouping
                      symbol for non-monetary numeric editing.

     LC_TIME          Defines the format and content of date and time
                      information.

     LC_MESSAGES      Defines the format and values of affirmative and
                      negative responses.

     The following options are supported:

     -b      Use big-endian byte order for output.

     -c      Creates permanent output even if warning messages have been
             issued.

     -D      BSD-style output.  Rather than the default of creating the
             localename directory and creating files like LC_CTYPE,
             LC_COLLATE, etc. in that directory, the output file names have
             the format "<localename>.<category>" and are dumped to the
             current directory.

     -f charmap
             Specifies the pathname of a file containing a mapping of
             character symbols and collating element symbols to actual
             character encodings.  This option must be specified if symbolic
             names (other than collating symbols defined in a collating-symbol
             keyword) are used.  If the -f option is not present, the default
             character mapping will be used.

     -i sourcefile
             The path name of a file containing the source definitions.  If
             this option is not present, source definitions will be read from
             standard input.

     -l      Use little-endian byte order for output.

     -u codeset
             Specifies the name of a codeset used as the target mapping of
             character symbols and collating element symbols whose encoding
             values are defined in terms of the ISO/IEC 10646-1:2000 standard
             position constant values.  See NOTES.

     -U      Ignore the presence of character symbols that have no matching
             character definition.  This facilitates the use of a common
             locale definition file to be used across multiple encodings, even
             when some symbols are not present in a given encoding.

     -v      Emit verbose debugging output on standard output.

     -w widthfile
             The path name of the file containing character screen width
             definitions.  If not supplied, then default screen widths will be
             assumed, which will generally not account for East Asian
             encodings requiring more than a single character cell to display,
             nor for combining or accent marks that occupy no additional
             screen width.

     -V version
             Specifies a version string describing the version of the locale
             definition.  This string can be retrieved with querylocale(3),
             and is intended to allow applications to detect locale definition
             changes.  Currently it is stored only for the LC_COLLATE
             category.

     The following operands are required:

     localename      Identifies the locale.  If the name contains one or more
                     slash characters, localename will be interpreted as a
                     path name where the created locale definitions will be
                     stored.  This capability may be restricted to users with
                     appropriate privileges.  (As a consequence of specifying
                     one localename, although several categories can be
                     processed in one execution, only categories belonging to
                     the same locale can be processed.)

OUTPUT
     localedef creates a directory of files that represents the locale's data,
     unless instructed otherwise by the -D ( BSD output) option.  The contants
     of this directory should generally be copied into the appropriate
     subdirectory of /usr/share/locale in order the definitions to be visible
     to programs linked with libc.

ENVIRONMENT
     See environ(7) for definitions of the following environment variables
     that affect the execution of localedef: LANG, LC_ALL, LC_COLLATE,
     LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, LC_MONETARY, LC_MUMERIC, LC_TIME, and NLSPATH.

EXIT STATUS
     The following exit values are returned:

     0   No errors occurred and the locales were successfully created.

     1   Warnings occurred and the locales were successfully created.

     2   The locale specification exceeded implementation limits or the coded
         character set or sets used were not supported by the implementation,
         and no locale was created.

     >3  Warnings or errors occurred and no output was created.

     If an error is detected, no permanent output will be created.

SEE ALSO
     locale(1), iconv_open(3), nl_langinfo(3), querylocale(3), strftime(3),
     environ(7)

WARNINGS
     If warnings occur, permanent output will be created if the -c option was
     specified.  The following conditions will cause warning messages to be
     issued:

     •   If a symbolic name not found in the charmap file is used for the
         descriptions of the LC_CTYPE or LC_COLLATE categories (for other
         categories, this will be an error condition).

     •   If optional keywords not supported by the implementation are present
         in the source.

NOTES
     When the -u option is used, the codeset option-argument is interpreted as
     a name of a codeset to which the ISO/IEC 10646-1:2000 standard position
     constant values are converted.  Both the ISO/IEC 10646-1:2000 standard
     position constant values and other formats (decimal, hexadecimal, or
     octal) are valid as encoding values within the charmap file.  The codeset
     can be any codeset that is supported by the iconv_open(3) function.

     When conflicts occur between the charmap specification of codeset,
     mb_cur_max, or mb_cur_min and the corresponding value for the codeset
     represented by the -u option-argument codeset, the localedef utility
     fails with an error.

     When conflicts occur between the charmap encoding values specified for
     symbolic names of characters of the portable character set and the
     character encoding values defined by the US-ASCII, the result is
     unspecified.

HISTORY
     localedef first appeared in FreeBSD 11.

     It was written by Garrett D'Amore <garrett@nexenta.com> for Illumos.
     John Marino <draco@marino.st> provided the alternations necessary to
     compile cleanly on DragonFly.  Baptiste Daroussin <bapt@FreeBSD.org>
     ported it to FreeBSD and converted it to tree(3).

FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6        November 8, 2020        FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6