A locale is a set of parameters that defines the user's language, country and any special variant preferences that the user wants to see in their user interface.
30
votes
2answers
405 views
Why is there no “Euro English” locale?
I used to use the somewhat whimsical en_DK.UTF-8 locale when installing a new system because that would produce (roughly) the locale results I wanted, even though I am not in Denmark.
Measurements ...
13
votes
3answers
6k views
What charset encoding is used for filenames and paths on Linux?
Does it depend on what file system I use? For example, ext2/ext3/ext4 but also what happens when I insert one of those "joliet" CD-ROMs with ISO 9660? I've heard that POSIX contains some sort of spec ...
10
votes
3answers
1k views
Does (should) LC_COLLATE affect character ranges?
Collation order through LC_COLLATE defines not only the sort order of individual characters, but also the meaning of character ranges. Or does it? Consider the following snippet:
unset LANGUAGE ...
9
votes
3answers
1k views
Understanding Unix file name encoding
I have a hard time understanding how the file name encoding works. On unix.SE
I find contradicting explanations.
File names are stored as characters
To quote another answer:
Several questions about ...
9
votes
4answers
4k views
Why is almost every program complaining about my locale?
I'm using Arch Linux, and I've followed the directions on the wiki about setting my locale.
Nearly every program that runs complains about the locale - even locale. It looks like this:
% locale
...
7
votes
2answers
520 views
Why are wc -m and wc -c different?
As a C programmer, I was surprised to see that wc -c (which count the number of bytes), and wc -m (which counts the number of characters) output very different results for a long, text file of mine. I ...
7
votes
5answers
2k views
Weird Stuff in Terminal When I Hit Tab
For some reason, today, everytime I hit tab in the terminal this shows up:
cat bash: warning: setlocale: LC_CTYPE: cannot change locale (en_CA)
Display all 150 possibilities? (y or n)
This ...
7
votes
2answers
1k views
Effect of $LANG on terminal
I'm trying to learn how the $LANG variable behaves with gnome-terminal (and its character encoding preference option). I've been using iso8859-1 (latin1) as my main character-set and all my filenames ...
7
votes
1answer
358 views
Why is bash extended-globbing variable substitution acting at the byte level?
I thought that bash variable substitution and globbing worked at character resolution, so I was rather surprised to see it acting at the byte level.
Everything in my locale is en_AU.UTF-8
When ...
6
votes
2answers
268 views
Set the language for a single program execution
Complete C++ i18n gettext() “hello world” example. sets the LANG environment variable using export before executing the program (Linux):
export LANG=es_MX.utf8
./hellogt
Is there a way to set the ...
6
votes
4answers
2k views
How do I make ls sort underscore characters first?
I like being able to name files and directories with an underscore prefix if it's something I want to keep separate from other files and directories at the same level. On Windows and Mac, for example, ...
5
votes
5answers
579 views
Why does locale es_MX work but not es?
Wikipedia entry for GNU gettext shows an example where the locale is just the lanuage, "fr". Whereas the 'i18n gettext() “hello world” example' in SO has the locale value with both the language and ...
5
votes
2answers
2k views
set LC_* but not LC_ALL
I'd like to have a German (Austria) locale (A4 paper size, 24 hour time, yyyy-mm-dd), but an English-language user interface (I don't like poor translations). I figured that the correct way to achieve ...
5
votes
1answer
1k views
How to get gnome-terminal in English?
Is it possible to select a different language for a specific application? On some systems I run Fedora15/Gnome in German, but want to use the Terminal in English including for the simple prompt ...
5
votes
1answer
105 views
Alphabetizing names in `ls` alias with .files not intermingled
I am currently using the following ls alias: alias ls='ls -alhGkpsq --color=auto'. This results in following directory listing.
[03:35] bryson@brys ~ :$ ls
total 48K
4.0K drwx------ 4 bryson 4.0K ...
5
votes
1answer
530 views
Get “date” to understand a timestamp phrase of a different language
My web-scraping scripts have long enjoyed using date -d to read in human-formatted time and date stamps like "March 11, 1999" and convert to any other format I need via the -s parameter.
How might I ...
5
votes
2answers
648 views
Output ls -l size field with digits grouped by thousands?
It is possible to make ls -l output the size field with digits grouped by thousands? If so, how?
For instance:
$ ls -l
-rw-rw---- 1 dahl dahl 43,210,052 2012-01-01 21:52 test.py
(Note the commas ...
5
votes
1answer
90 views
locale definition with French republican calendar
I wonder if it is possible to create a locale definition that would make the C library format the dates according to the French republican calendar.
I expect then, for example, run `date' and get ...
4
votes
3answers
183 views
Use command grep and locate
How I can make the grep command locate certain words in the files specified by the routes found by the locate command?
locate my.cnf | grep user
(I want that grep command search the word "user" ...
4
votes
2answers
111 views
What would break if the C locale was UTF-8 instead of ASCII?
The C locale is defined to use the ASCII charset and POSIX does not provide a way to use a charset without changing the locale as well.
What would happen if the encoding of C were switched to UTF-8 ...
4
votes
2answers
7k views
ssh and character encoding
When I ssh into my VPS, I have irssi running in screen. When someone sends a unicode character (such as © or €), irssi displays garbage when I use it via the screen in a ssh session. If I connect to ...
4
votes
1answer
77 views
Why is uniq ignoring Unicode and lines with a single letter?
I'm trying to combine both the American and British dictionaries into one large dictionaries, and I'm trying to remove all the duplicates from the superset, but it seems that uniq is not outputting ...
4
votes
1answer
780 views
How do I configure setfont and loadkeys properly?
I'm installing LFS and I'm struggling with this section. My locale is sv_SE.UTF-8 and I have a Swedish keyboard. So I suppose I should enable unicode and that the keymap is sv-latin1:
cat > ...
4
votes
0answers
285 views
Issue with internationally zipped files
I've asked a few people and just thought about asking it here. We get sent files from an international company for design work in a zip format. Well when I run a script to unzip the files in the ...
4
votes
0answers
354 views
Dead keys not working in Java Swing applications
I'm currently using Ubuntu 10.10 and Netbeans 7.0 and I can't type accented letters with dead keys any more. It's not a version specific problem seems it's related with Swing since I've got the same ...
3
votes
3answers
564 views
localization of man pages on Linux (Ubuntu)
Is there an option to output a manual page in a different language? I don't want to change the computer language completely, but only specific manual pages.
For example
$ man -English man
Man is a ...
3
votes
2answers
547 views
Where has my `uniq` or `sort -u` line gone, with some unicode characters
What is going on in the following code snippet? I'm not getting my expected output.
I'd think it was a bug, but it happens for 2 different programs (uniq and sort), so I suspect it is something ...
3
votes
1answer
367 views
What is the relevance of 'en_AU' in 'LC_CTYPE'? and what is `locale LC_CTYPE` output all about?
First off: Although I can understand the relevance of geographic-region detail for LC_TIME, LC_NUMERIC, and most other LC_* vars, I don't quite see how 'en_AU' relates to LC_CTYPE...
Isn't UTF-8 (and ...
3
votes
1answer
182 views
How to control the list of locales which are generated by APT?
Each time I install or operate in other means l10n-related packages, the APT system "rebuilds" a lot of English locales, which takes considerable time. Look at the APT log:
Configuring ...
3
votes
2answers
443 views
What's the default order of linux sort?
For a long period I think the default behavior of sort program is using ASCII. However, when I input the following lines into sort without any arguments:
#
@
I got:
@
#
But according to the ...
3
votes
1answer
622 views
How to use grep/ack with files in arbitrary encoding?
On my Linux desktop I have a UTF-8 locale. When I try to search some KOI8-R encoded files with grep (ack), it fails. If I manually encode the pattern into KOI8-R and pass that as an argument, it ...
3
votes
1answer
145 views
man gives the error about locale
I have
$ locale
LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE=ru_RU.UTF-8
LC_NUMERIC=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_TIME=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE=ru_RU.UTF-8
LC_MONETARY=ru_RU.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_PAPER=ru_RU.UTF-8
...
3
votes
4answers
242 views
Qt programs have Greek fonts on one Debian account (QtConfig, Virtualbox and VLC)
Update: I have created a new user via adduser and Virtualbox fonts are OK there. This does not solve my problem, however... I still don't know what is going on and I'd like my own user account to have ...
3
votes
1answer
132 views
Encoding Problem: Qt Apps delete all non ASCII chars from files
Qt applications are deleting non-latin characters from ISO-8859 encoded files on my Gentoo system. Actually I'm trying to merge two German files with KDiff3 and P4Merge (making "Whlen" out of ...
3
votes
1answer
91 views
Encoding of a zip file
When I extract some file (mp3) with japanese or korean characters within its filename on Windows, they appear normally, but when I extract it on Linux (Ubuntu/Mint) they appear as something like this
...
2
votes
2answers
587 views
Unable to type some special characters in vi on a debian
on a machine I have access to, when I type "€" in vi, "~B� " is displayed instead, and when I type "£", "£ "
What can cause this strange behavior, how can I fix it?
Typing it in the console gives even ...
2
votes
1answer
44 views
How would a script know when running locale-gen is necessary?
One of the basic steps in setting up a new system is getting the right glibc locale files generated. At least in ArchLinux and Gentoo, one is expected to do this step by hand. I am trying to setup a ...
2
votes
1answer
4k views
How to change Firefox language?
I have a Scientific Linux on my notebook (installed with German language).
I installed Firefox with a simple "yum install firefox".
But I need Firefox with Hungarian language.
How can I configure ...
2
votes
1answer
113 views
how to export zh_CN.utf8 in Arch liveCD environment?
After i typed locale -a it showed only c, en_US.utf8, POSIX, then how to export zh_CN.utf8?
Cause I've to use a software, which uses zh_CN, to connect the Internet during installation progress...
Any ...
2
votes
1answer
63 views
Console font - how to show accents?
Arch linux on VirtualBox.
My problem is the console (not X) does not show accents like "á ã ç". The problem is showing, not typing. I have a text file with these accents and when I use "cat" the ...
2
votes
1answer
116 views
Mint: startx from tty loads X in chinese
OS: Linux Mint 14
Tty: tty/6
I am trying to start X using startx from tty/6. I do not have a .xinitrc in my home directory. X gets loaded but it loads everything in chinese. I am not sure where the ...
2
votes
1answer
129 views
Should 'LC_ALL=fr_FR.UTF-8 date +%x' give consistent results across machines?
The %x format specifier to the date utility should, according to the man page, use the locale specific date format. However, when I specify the same installed locale and try this on two different ...
2
votes
1answer
1k views
How to fix Russian letters in a Wine application when adjusting LANG does not help?
An application with a Russian UI shows question marks instead the most of its text (some elements are rendered ok though).
The system locale is English (en_US, en_IE), I've tried Ubuntu ant XUbuntu ...
2
votes
2answers
2k views
How do I install the cs_CZ.ISO8859-2 locale on Ubuntu 12.04
I need the cs_CZ.ISO8859-2 locale to exist on Ubuntu 12.04 so a specific unit test can pass. The test makes the following call:
std::locale("cs_CZ.ISO8859-2")
On my OS X Lion install, this locale ...
2
votes
2answers
1k views
terminal: non-english characters
I used to be able to copy&paste (or type if I load respective keyboard layout)
any kind of characters (eg. é ö ñ ß و 好) in my console/terminal.
Now I bought a new computer and it does not work ...
2
votes
2answers
2k views
Wheezy locales problem - gnome-control-center region crashes with segfault
In the last couple of days my locales have a serious issue. I normally am "en_GB.UTF-8". Suddenly when running apt, error messages are appearing saying
Traceback (most recent call last):
File ...
2
votes
1answer
156 views
zsh broke compose key and special chars
I thought I'd switch to zsh, so I did just that with chsh -s /usr/bin/zsh user, unfortunately, it broke my compose key (unresponsive both in the console and in an X terminal); also, when I read email ...
2
votes
2answers
452 views
How to specify printer paper size in mm instead of inches?
In eog (Eye of Gnome) 2.30.2, I found no way to specify size unit in mm in Print... and Page Setup dialogs:
So I have to convert these sizes in inches to sizes in mm.
I'm using CUPS as the print ...
2
votes
1answer
162 views
How to get rid of special characters in the output of make on centos
I installed centos6.3. When I run gcc, it outputs errors but the function names are surrounded by special characters like this
‘setup_connection’:
This same is repeated with variable names. I ...
2
votes
0answers
221 views
Problems changing PS1 to use special character
I'm trying to get my zsh to look something like this: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1068202#p1068202.
Whenever I print the └───╼ part of the PS1 to my terminal (or in the .zshrc for ...
