32.12 Locales

POSIX defines a concept of “locales” which control which language to use in language-related features. These Emacs variables control how Emacs interacts with these features.

Variable: locale-coding-system

This variable specifies the coding system to use for decoding system error messages and—on X Window system only—keyboard input, for encoding the format argument to format-time-string, and for decoding the return value of format-time-string.

Variable: system-messages-locale

This variable specifies the locale to use for generating system error messages. Changing the locale can cause messages to come out in a different language or in a different orthography. If the variable is nil, the locale is specified by environment variables in the usual POSIX fashion.

Variable: system-time-locale

This variable specifies the locale to use for formatting time values. Changing the locale can cause messages to appear according to the conventions of a different language. If the variable is nil, the locale is specified by environment variables in the usual POSIX fashion.

Function: locale-info item

This function returns locale data item for the current POSIX locale, if available. item should be one of these symbols:

codeset

Return the character set as a string (locale item CODESET).

days

Return a 7-element vector of day names (locale items DAY_1 through DAY_7);

months

Return a 12-element vector of month names (locale items MON_1 through MON_12).

paper

Return a list (width height) for the default paper size measured in millimeters (locale items PAPER_WIDTH and PAPER_HEIGHT).

If the system can’t provide the requested information, or if item is not one of those symbols, the value is nil. All strings in the return value are decoded using locale-coding-system. See Locales in The GNU Libc Manual, for more information about locales and locale items.