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.iso88591

• Solaris 10: fr

• IBM AIX 4.2: fr_FR or fr_FR.ISO8859-1

• OSF1 4.0: fr_FR.ISO8859-1

• SGI IRIX 6.2: fr

On 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