setlocale() always returns "C"

[yogeshmk]

I'm writing an application which is required to function with many
languages and also compile on Linux & windows. Here's how I find the
locale ..

# include <stdio.h>
# include <locale.h>

int
main(void)
{
unsigned char* loc = NULL;
loc = setlocale(LC_MESSAGES, NULL);

puts (loc);
return 0;
}

Depending upon what string 'loc' contains, I need to write "hello
world" (or any other message) in the corrosponding language (there are
separate header files with texts in different languages coded in a
struct.

I've ran this piece of code on RedHat linux (en_US.UTF-8), Windows XP
(??) and Ubuntu linux (on which the `locale` *command* returns
"en_IN.UTF-8" which is correct). However, I observe that the function
always returns "C" as the locale.

Q1. What explains this behaviour of 'setlocale()'
Q2. Any other way to find out the currently set language on the
computer?

cheers!

 

[Huibert Bol]

I'm writing an application which is required to function with many
languages and also compile on Linux & windows. Here's how I find the
locale ..

# include <stdio.h>
# include <locale.h>

int
main(void)
{
unsigned char* loc = NULL;
loc = setlocale(LC_MESSAGES, NULL);

puts (loc);
return 0;
}

I've ran this piece of code on RedHat linux (en_US.UTF-8), Windows XP
(??) and Ubuntu linux (on which the `locale` *command* returns
"en_IN.UTF-8" which is correct). However, I observe that the function
always returns "C" as the locale.

Q1. What explains this behaviour of 'setlocale()'
Q2. Any other way to find out the currently set language on the
computer?

A program's locale at startup will always be "C", so that's all you're going
to get without explicitly setting it to something else.

To change the current locale you want to use something like:

setlocale(LC_MESSAGES, "");

- Huibert.

 

[yogeshmk]

A program's locale at startup will always be "C", so that's all you're going
to get without explicitly setting it to something else.

To change the current locale you want to use something like:

  setlocale(LC_MESSAGES, "");

 - Huibert.

Ummm....I was under the impression that 'setlocale()' with second
param NULL will query and return the current locale of the OS.

If what you say is right, then I have to set the locale myself, but
the question is which? I don't know whether my program is running on a
computer with spanish locale settings so I need to print "Hola Terra!"
instead of "Hello World!"?

 

[Huibert Bol]

If what you say is right, then I have to set the locale myself, but
the question is which? I don't know whether my program is running on a
computer with spanish locale settings so I need to print "Hola Terra!"
instead of "Hello World!"?

Using an empty string (like in the example above), will set the locale
"correctly". Under POSIX systems, for example, it will use the LC_*
environment variables.

 

[yogeshmk]

Ummm....I was under the impression that 'setlocale()' with second
param NULL will query and return the current locale of the OS.

If what you say is right, then I have to set the locale myself, but
the question is which? I don't know whether my program is running on a
computer with spanish locale settings so I need to print "Hola Terra!"
instead of "Hello World!"?

I anyway tried the setlocale() call again.

loc = setlocale(LC_ALL /* any LC_* catagories are ok here */, "" /
*instead of NULL */);

returns me the current locale set on my system.
Thanks for the reply.

cheers!

 

[santosh]

Ummm....I was under the impression that 'setlocale()' with second
param NULL will query and return the current locale of the OS.

If what you say is right, then I have to set the locale myself, but
the question is which? I don't know whether my program is running on a
computer with spanish locale settings so I need to print "Hola Terra!"
instead of "Hello World!"?

You can usually get the locale being used from environment variables,
for example the LANG variable under Unix system. For more details ask
in a group targetting your system like comp.unix.programmer or
comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32, since C leaves it entirely upto
the implementation to assign the semantics for locales other than "C".
In a production program you'll probably want to use a tried and tested
internationalisation package rather than reinvent on your own.