setlocale
Set locale information
Description
stringfalse setlocale(int $category, stringnull $locales, string ...$rest)
Alternative signature (not supported with named arguments):
stringfalse setlocale(int $category, array $locale_array)
Warning
The locale information is maintained per process, not per thread. If you
are running PHP on a multithreaded server API
, 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.
On Windows, locale information is maintained per thread as of PHP 7.0.5.
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 ctype_alpha
-
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)
-
locales
-
If locales is the empty string
"" or is null, the locale names will be set from the
values of environment variables with the same names as the above
categories, or from "LANG".
If locales is "0",
the locale setting is not affected, only the current setting is returned.
If locales is followed by additional
parameters then each 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.
-
rest
-
Optional string parameters to try as locale settings until
success.
-
locale_array
-
Each array element 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.
Note:
On Windows, setlocale(LC_ALL, '') sets the locale names from the
system's regional/language settings (accessible via Control Panel).
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.
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 Retrieve current setting
<?php
/* Retrieve current setting */
$current = setlocale(LC_ALL, null);
echo "Current locale '$current'";
?>
Example #3 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'";
?>