C++ In a Nutshell

Name

setlocale function — Sets or queries locale

Synopsis

char* setlocale(int category, const char* locale)

The setlocale function sets the locale for a specific category, which you must specify using one of the LC_ macros. Use LC_ALL to set all categories to the same locale.

The locale parameter is the name of the locale. The default for all categories is the "C" locale. The empty string (“”) is an implementation-defined native locale. The implementation can define other possible values for locale.

To query the current locale, pass a null pointer as the locale. Note that each category might have a different locale, so, when querying for LC_ALL, the return value might contain multiple locale names.

The return value is a pointer to a string that contains the new locale (or current locale if you are querying with a null locale parameter) for the specified category. If the locale cannot be set, a null pointer is returned.

Warning

Do not modify the string returned from setlocale. A call to setlocale might overwrite the contents of the string returned from an earlier call (or simultaneous call in a multithreaded program).