setlocale

Contents

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7)

setlocale — Set locale information

Description

setlocale ( int $category , string $locale [, string $... ] ) : string

setlocale ( int $category , array $locale ) : string

Sets locale information.

PHP: setlocale - Manual Home of Manuel PHP Contents Haut

Parameters

category

category is a named constant specifying the category of the functions affected by the locale setting:

LC_ALL for all of the below
LC_COLLATE for string comparison, see strcoll()
LC_CTYPE for character classification and conversion, for example strtoupper()
LC_MONETARY for localeconv()
LC_NUMERIC for decimal separator (See also localeconv())
LC_TIME for date and time formatting with strftime()
LC_MESSAGES for system responses (available if PHP was compiled with libintl)

locale

If locale is NULL or the empty string "", the locale names will be set from the values of environment variables with the same names as the above categories, or from "LANG".

If locale is "0", the locale setting is not affected, only the current setting is returned.

If locale is an array or followed by additional parameters then each array element or parameter is tried to be set as new locale until success. This is useful if a locale is known under different names on different systems or for providing a fallback for a possibly not available locale.

...

(Optional string or array parameters to try as locale settings until success.)

Note:
On Windows, setlocale(LC_ALL, '') sets the locale names from the system's regional/language settings (accessible via Control Panel).

PHP: setlocale - Manual Home of Manuel PHP Contents Haut

Return Values

Returns the new current locale, or FALSE if the locale functionality is not implemented on your platform, the specified locale does not exist or the category name is invalid.

An invalid category name also causes a warning message. Category/locale names can be found in » RFC 1766 and » ISO 639. Different systems have different naming schemes for locales.

Note:
The return value of setlocale() depends on the system that PHP is running. It returns exactly what the system setlocale function returns.

PHP: setlocale - Manual Home of Manuel PHP Contents Haut

Changelog

Version	Description
7.0.0	Support for the `category` parameter passed as a string has been removed. Only LC_* constants can be used as of this version.
5.3.0	This function now throws an `E_DEPRECATED` notice if a string is passed to the `category` parameter instead of one of the LC_* constants.

PHP: setlocale - Manual Home of Manuel PHP Contents Haut

Examples

Example #1 setlocale() Examples


<?php
/* Set locale to Dutch */
setlocale(LC_ALL, 'nl_NL');

/* Output: vrijdag 22 december 1978 */
echo strftime("%A %e %B %Y", mktime(0, 0, 0, 12, 22, 1978));

/* try different possible locale names for german */
$loc_de = setlocale(LC_ALL, 'de_DE@euro', 'de_DE', 'de', 'ge');
echo "Preferred locale for german on this system is '$loc_de'";
?>

Example #2 setlocale() Examples for Windows


<?php
/* Set locale to Dutch */
setlocale(LC_ALL, 'nld_nld');

/* Output: vrijdag 22 december 1978 */
echo strftime("%A %d %B %Y", mktime(0, 0, 0, 12, 22, 1978));

/* try different possible locale names for german */
$loc_de = setlocale(LC_ALL, 'de_DE@euro', 'de_DE', 'deu_deu');
echo "Preferred locale for german on this system is '$loc_de'";
?>

PHP: setlocale - Manual Home of Manuel PHP Contents Haut

Notes

Warning

The locale information is maintained per process, not per thread. If you are running PHP on a multithreaded server API like IIS, HHVM or Apache on Windows, you may experience sudden changes in locale settings while a script is running, though the script itself never called setlocale(). This happens due to other scripts running in different threads of the same process at the same time, changing the process-wide locale using setlocale().

Tip

Windows users will find useful information about locale strings at Microsoft's MSDN website. Supported language strings can be found in the » language strings documentation and supported country/region strings in the » country/region strings documentation.

Find a PHP function

English translation

You have asked to visit this site in English. For now, only the interface is translated, but not all the content yet.

If you want to help me in translations, your contribution is welcome. All you need to do is register on the site, and send me a message asking me to add you to the group of translators, which will give you the opportunity to translate the pages you want. A link at the bottom of each translated page indicates that you are the translator, and has a link to your profile.

Thank you in advance.

Document created the 30/01/2003, last modified the 26/10/2018
Source of the printed document:https://www.gaudry.be/en/php-rf-function.setlocale.html

The infobrol is a personal site whose content is my sole responsibility. The text is available under CreativeCommons license (BY-NC-SA). More info on the terms of use and the author.

References

Manuel PHP : http://php.net

These references and links indicate documents consulted during the writing of this page, or which may provide additional information, but the authors of these sources can not be held responsible for the content of this page.
The author This site is solely responsible for the way in which the various concepts, and the freedoms that are taken with the reference works, are presented here. Remember that you must cross multiple source information to reduce the risk of errors.

Contents Haut