How do I set the locale in the current terminal session?
I am trying to change the encoding in the current urxvt session by changing a variable LANG
. Be that as it may, it looks like it doesn't apply right away. That's what I'm doing:
Available locales:
$ locale -a C en_US.utf8 POSIX ru_RU.koi8r ru_RU.utf8
Before installing a new locale:
$ echo "" | od -t x1
0000000 d0 b0 0a # good! UTF-8
# | a ||NL|
After:
$ export LANG=ru_RU.KOI8-R
$ echo "" | od -t x1
0000000 d0 b0 0a # hm..expect 'c1 0a'
Inject a new urxvt instance by running $ urxvt &
and finally get what I want:
$ echo "" | od -t x1
0000000 c1 0a
Why LANG
not change behavior in the first place?
source to share
There are two factors:
- you can use a shell with inline echo (and don't tell the shell that you are changing locale)
-
LANG
the first environment variable is not checked. According tolocale(7)
, it will be checked and . the first:LC_ALL
LC_CTYPE
If the second argument to setlocale (3) is an empty string, "", for
the default locale, it is determined using the following steps:
1. If there is a non-null environment variable LC_ALL, the value
of LC_ALL is used.
2. If an environment variable with the same name as one of the
categories above exists and is non-null, its value is used for
that category.
3. If there is a non-null environment variable LANG, the value of
LANG is used.
For the latter, view the output of the command locale
, which lists all the environment variables that will be used:
$ export LANG=ru_RU.KOI8-R
$ locale
LANG=ru_RU.KOI8-R
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
A simple change shouldn't change other variables, but a change usually does. LANG
LC_ALL
$ export LC_ALL=ru_RU.KOI8-R
$ locale
LANG=ru_RU.KOI8-R
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="ru_RU.KOI8-R"
LC_NUMERIC="ru_RU.KOI8-R"
LC_TIME="ru_RU.KOI8-R"
LC_COLLATE="ru_RU.KOI8-R"
LC_MONETARY="ru_RU.KOI8-R"
LC_MESSAGES="ru_RU.KOI8-R"
LC_PAPER="ru_RU.KOI8-R"
LC_NAME="ru_RU.KOI8-R"
LC_ADDRESS="ru_RU.KOI8-R"
LC_TELEPHONE="ru_RU.KOI8-R"
LC_MEASUREMENT="ru_RU.KOI8-R"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="ru_RU.KOI8-R"
LC_ALL=ru_RU.KOI8-R
source to share