setlocale
(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)
setlocale — Set locale information
Description
$category, string $locales, string ...$rest): string|falseAlternative signature (not supported with named arguments):
$category, array $locale_array): string|falseSets locale information.
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 -
categoryis a named constant specifying the category of the functions affected by the locale setting:-
LC_ALLfor all of the below -
LC_COLLATEfor string comparison, see strcoll() -
LC_CTYPEfor character classification and conversion, for example strtoupper() -
LC_MONETARYfor localeconv() -
LC_NUMERICfor decimal separator (See also localeconv()) -
LC_TIMEfor date and time formatting with strftime() -
LC_MESSAGESfor system responses (available if PHP was compiled withlibintl)
-
-
locales -
If
localesis 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
localesis"0", the locale setting is not affected, only the current setting is returned.If
localesis 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
setlocalefunction 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() 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'";
?>
Notes
Windows users will find useful information about
locales 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.
