locale is a command line utility that provides information about the current locale settings of the system. A locale is a set of parameters that defines the user’s language, regional and cultural preferences, such as the character set, the format of dates, times, and numbers, and the collation order for sorting strings.
locale is an important tool for system administrators and developers, as it provides information about the locale settings that are used by various applications and libraries on the system. It is also used to troubleshoot locale-related issues, such as incorrect sorting of strings or incorrect formatting of dates and numbers.
If you encounter the below error while running the command locale:
locale: command not found
you may try installing the below package as per your choice of distribution:
| Distribution | Command |
|---|---|
| Debian | apt-get install libc-bin |
| Ubuntu | apt-get install libc-bin |
| Arch Linux | pacman -S glibc |
| Kali Linux | apt-get install libc-bin |
| CentOS | yum install glibc-common |
| Fedora | dnf install glibc-common |
| Raspbian | apt-get install libc-bin |
locale Command Examples
1. List all global environment variables describing the user’s locale:
# locale
2. List all available locales:
# locale --all-locales
3. Display all available locales and the associated metadata:
# locale --all-locales --verbose
4. Display the current date format:
# locale date_fmt