Locale Name Format
As you can see, locale names are system-dependent. Most systems, however, tend to follow the XPG naming convention, where a locale name has the following format:
language_territory.encoding
where
language is the language name;
territory is the territory name: a language can be spoken in different areas or countries: French, for example, is spoken in France, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, and other countries);
encoding is a code set or an encoding method by which characters are coded.
On Unix Systems
The following examples show the format of a locale name as displayed on different Unix® systems. The locale is for French as spoken in France with the Latin1 encoding.
HP-UX 10.x:
fr_FR.iso88591Solaris 10:
frIBM AIX 4.2:
fr_FR or
fr_FR.ISO8859-1OSF1 4.0:
fr_FR.ISO8859-1SGI IRIX 6.2:
frOn Windows Systems
The following example shows the format of a locale on a Windows® system. The locale is for French as spoken in France with Windows Code Page 1252.
Windows:
French_France.1252
Version 5.8
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