MAN page from RedHat Other perl-5.004-0.1.i386.rpm

PERLLOCALE

Section: Perl Programmers Reference Guide (1)
Updated: perl 5.004, patch 04
Index

NAME

perllocale - Perl locale handling (internationalization and localization)

DESCRIPTION

Perl supports language-specific notions of data such as ``is this aletter'', ``what is the uppercase equivalent of this letter'', and ``whichof these letters comes first''. These are important issues, especiallyfor languages other than English - but also for English: it would bevery nai.ve to think that A-Za-z defines all the ``letters''. Perlis also aware that some character other than `.' may be preferred as adecimal point, and that output date representations may belanguage-specific. The process of making an application take account ofits users' preferences in such matters is called internationalization(often abbreviated as i18n); telling such an application about aparticular set of preferences is known as localization (l10n).

Perl can understand language-specific data via the standardized (ISO C,XPG4, POSIX 1.c) method called ``the locale system''. The locale system iscontrolled per application using one pragma, one function call, andseveral environment variables.

NOTE: This feature is new in Perl 5.004, and does not apply unless anapplication specifically requests it - see the section on Backward compatibility.The one exception is that write() now always uses the current locale- see the section on NOTES.

PREPARING TO USE LOCALES

If Perl applications are to be able to understand and present your datacorrectly according a locale of your choice, all of the followingmust be true:

•: Your operating system must support the locale system. If it does,you should find that the setlocale() function is a documented part ofits C library.
•: Definitions for the locales which you use must be installed. You, oryour system administrator, must make sure that this is the case. Theavailable locales, the location in which they are kept, and the mannerin which they are installed, vary from system to system. Some systemsprovide only a few, hard-wired, locales, and do not allow more to beadded; others allow you to add ``canned'' locales provided by the systemsupplier; still others allow you or the system administrator to defineand add arbitrary locales. (You may have to ask your supplier toprovide canned locales which are not delivered with your operatingsystem.) Read your system documentation for further illumination.
•: Perl must believe that the locale system is supported. If it does,perl -V:d_setlocale will say that the value for d_setlocale isdefine.

If you want a Perl application to process and present your dataaccording to a particular locale, the application code should includethe use locale pragma (see the section on The use locale pragma) whereappropriate, and at least one of the following must be true:

•: The locale-determining environment variables (see the section on ENVIRONMENT)must be correctly set up, either by yourself, or by the person who setup your system account, at the time the application is started.
•: The application must set its own locale using the method described inthe section on The setlocale function.

USING LOCALES

The use locale pragma

By default, Perl ignores the current locale. The use localepragma tells Perl to use the current locale for some operations:

•: The comparison operators (lt, le, cmp, ge, and gt) andthe POSIX string collation functions strcoll() and strxfrm() useLC_COLLATE. sort() is also affected if it is used without anexplicit comparison function because it uses cmp by default.
Note: eq and ne are unaffected by the locale: they alwaysperform a byte-by-byte comparison of their scalar operands. What'smore, if cmp finds that its operands are equal according to thecollation sequence specified by the current locale, it goes on toperform a byte-by-byte comparison, and only returns 0 (equal) if theoperands are bit-for-bit identical. If you really want to know whethertwo strings - which eq and cmp may consider different - are equalas far as collation in the locale is concerned, see the discussion inthe section on Category LC_COLLATE: Collation.
•: Regular expressions and case-modification functions (uc(), lc(),ucfirst(), and lcfirst()) use LC_CTYPE
•: The formatting functions (printf(), sprintf() and write()) useLC_NUMERIC
•: The POSIX date formatting function (strftime()) uses LC_TIME.

LC_COLLATE, LC_CTYPE, and so on, are discussed further in the section on LOCALECATEGORIES.

The default behavior returns with no locale or on reaching theend of the enclosing block.

Note that the string result of any operation that uses localeinformation is tainted, as it is possible for a locale to beuntrustworthy. See the section on SECURITY.

The setlocale function

You can switch locales as often as you wish at run time with thePOSIX::setlocale() function:

        # This functionality not usable prior to Perl 5.004        require 5.004;

        # Import locale-handling tool set from POSIX module.        # This example uses: setlocale -- the function call        #                    LC_CTYPE -- explained below        use POSIX qw(locale_h);

        # query and save the old locale        $old_locale = setlocale(LC_CTYPE);

        setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "fr_CA.ISO8859-1");        # LC_CTYPE now in locale "French, Canada, codeset ISO 8859-1"

        setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "");        # LC_CTYPE now reset to default defined by LC_ALL/LC_CTYPE/LANG        # environment variables.  See below for documentation.

        # restore the old locale        setlocale(LC_CTYPE, $old_locale);

The first argument of setlocale() gives the category, the second thelocale. The category tells in what aspect of data processing youwant to apply locale-specific rules. Category names are discussed inthe section on LOCALE CATEGORIES and the section on ENVIRONMENT. The locale is the name of acollection of customization information corresponding to a particularcombination of language, country or territory, and codeset. Read on forhints on the naming of locales: not all systems name locales as in theexample.

If no second argument is provided, the function returns a string namingthe current locale for the category. You can use this value as thesecond argument in a subsequent call to setlocale(). If a secondargument is given and it corresponds to a valid locale, the locale forthe category is set to that value, and the function returns thenow-current locale value. You can use this in a subsequent call tosetlocale(). (In some implementations, the return value may sometimesdiffer from the value you gave as the second argument - think of it asan alias for the value that you gave.)

As the example shows, if the second argument is an empty string, thecategory's locale is returned to the default specified by thecorresponding environment variables. Generally, this results in areturn to the default which was in force when Perl started up: changesto the environment made by the application after startup may or may notbe noticed, depending on the implementation of your system's C library.

If the second argument does not correspond to a valid locale, the localefor the category is not changed, and the function returns undef.

For further information about the categories, consult the setlocale(3) manpage.For the locales available in your system, also consult the setlocale(3) manpageand see whether it leads you to the list of the available locales(search for the SEE ALSO section). If that fails, try the followingcommand lines:

        locale -a

        nlsinfo

        ls /usr/lib/nls/loc

        ls /usr/lib/locale

        ls /usr/lib/nls

and see whether they list something resembling these

        en_US.ISO8859-1     de_DE.ISO8859-1     ru_RU.ISO8859-5        en_US               de_DE               ru_RU        en                  de                  ru        english             german              russian        english.iso88591    german.iso88591     russian.iso88595

Sadly, even though the calling interface for setlocale() has beenstandardized, the names of the locales and the directories wherethe configuration is, have not. The basic form of the name islanguage_country/territory.codeset, but thelatter parts are not always present.

Two special locales are worth particular mention: ``C'' and ``POSIX''.Currently these are effectively the same locale: the difference ismainly that the first one is defined by the C standard and the second bythe POSIX standard. What they define is the default locale in whichevery program starts in the absence of locale information in itsenvironment. (The default default locale, if you will.) Its languageis (American) English and its character codeset ASCII.

NOTE: Not all systems have the ``POSIX'' locale (not all systems arePOSIX-conformant), so use ``C'' when you need explicitly to specify thisdefault locale.

The localeconv function

The POSIX::localeconv() function allows you to get particulars of thelocale-dependent numeric formatting information specified by the currentLC_NUMERIC and LC_MONETARY locales. (If you just want the name ofthe current locale for a particular category, use POSIX::setlocale()with a single parameter - see the section on The setlocale function.)

        use POSIX qw(locale_h);

        # Get a reference to a hash of locale-dependent info        $locale_values = localeconv();

        # Output sorted list of the values        for (sort keys %$locale_values) {            printf "%-20s = %s\n", $_, $locale_values->{$_}        }

localeconv() takes no arguments, and returns a reference to a hash.The keys of this hash are formatting variable names such asdecimal_point and thousands_sep; the values are the correspondingvalues. See the localeconv entry in the POSIX (3) manpage for a longer example, which listsall the categories an implementation might be expected to provide; someprovide more and others fewer, however. Note that you don't need uselocale: as a function with the job of querying the locale, localeconv()always observes the current locale.

Here's a simple-minded example program which rewrites its command lineparameters as integers formatted correctly in the current locale:

        # See comments in previous example        require 5.004;        use POSIX qw(locale_h);

        # Get some of locale's numeric formatting parameters        my ($thousands_sep, $grouping) =             @{localeconv()}{'thousands_sep', 'grouping'};

        # Apply defaults if values are missing        $thousands_sep = ',' unless $thousands_sep;        $grouping = 3 unless $grouping;

        # Format command line params for current locale        for (@ARGV) {            $_ = int;    # Chop non-integer part            1 while            s/(\d)(\d{$grouping}($|$thousands_sep))/$1$thousands_sep$2/;            print "$_";        }        print "\n";

LOCALE CATEGORIES

The subsections which follow describe basic locale categories. As wellas these, there are some combination categories which allow themanipulation of more than one basic category at a time. Seethe section on ENVIRONMENT for a discussion of these.

Category LC_COLLATE: Collation

When in the scope of use locale, Perl looks to the LC_COLLATEenvironment variable to determine the application's notions on thecollation (ordering) of characters. ('b' follows `a' in Latinalphabets, but where do `a' and `a°' belong?)

Here is a code snippet that will tell you what are the alphanumericcharacters in the current locale, in the locale order:

        use locale;        print +(sort grep /\w/, map { chr() } 0..255), "\n";

Compare this with the characters that you see and their order if youstate explicitly that the locale should be ignored:

        no locale;        print +(sort grep /\w/, map { chr() } 0..255), "\n";

This machine-native collation (which is what you get unless uselocale has appeared earlier in the same block) must be used forsorting raw binary data, whereas the locale-dependent collation of thefirst example is useful for natural text.

As noted in the section on USING LOCALES, cmp compares according to the currentcollation locale when use locale is in effect, but falls back to abyte-by-byte comparison for strings which the locale says are equal. Youcan use POSIX::strcoll() if you don't want this fall-back:

        use POSIX qw(strcoll);        $equal_in_locale =            !strcoll("space and case ignored", "SpaceAndCaseIgnored");

$equal_in_locale will be true if the collation locale specifies adictionary-like ordering which ignores space characters completely, andwhich folds case.

If you have a single string which you want to check for ``equality inlocale'' against several others, you might think you could gain a littleefficiency by using POSIX::strxfrm() in conjunction with eq:

        use POSIX qw(strxfrm);        $xfrm_string = strxfrm("Mixed-case string");        print "locale collation ignores spaces\n"            if $xfrm_string eq strxfrm("Mixed-casestring");        print "locale collation ignores hyphens\n"            if $xfrm_string eq strxfrm("Mixedcase string");        print "locale collation ignores case\n"            if $xfrm_string eq strxfrm("mixed-case string");

strxfrm() takes a string and maps it into a transformed string for usein byte-by-byte comparisons against other transformed strings duringcollation. ``Under the hood'', locale-affected Perl comparison operatorscall strxfrm() for both their operands, then do a byte-by-bytecomparison of the transformed strings. By calling strxfrm() explicitly,and using a non locale-affected comparison, the example attempts to savea couple of transformations. In fact, it doesn't save anything: Perlmagic (see the section on Magic Variables in the perlguts manpage) creates the transformed version of astring the first time it's needed in a comparison, then keeps it aroundin case it's needed again. An example rewritten the easy way withcmp runs just about as fast. It also copes with null charactersembedded in strings; if you call strxfrm() directly, it treats the firstnull it finds as a terminator. And don't expect the transformed stringsit produces to be portable across systems - or even from one revisionof your operating system to the next. In short, don't call strxfrm()directly: let Perl do it for you.

Note: use locale isn't shown in some of these examples, as it isn'tneeded: strcoll() and strxfrm() exist only to generate locale-dependentresults, and so always obey the current LC_COLLATE locale.

Category LC_CTYPE: Character Types

When in the scope of use locale, Perl obeys the LC_CTYPE localesetting. This controls the application's notion of which characters arealphabetic. This affects Perl's \w regular expression metanotation,which stands for alphanumeric characters - that is, alphabetic andnumeric characters. (Consult the perlre manpage for more information aboutregular expressions.) Thanks to LC_CTYPE, depending on your localesetting, characters like `ae', `d-', `β', and'o' may be understood as \w characters.

The LC_CTYPE locale also provides the map used in translatingcharacters between lower and uppercase. This affects the case-mappingfunctions - lc(), lcfirst, uc() and ucfirst(); case-mappinginterpolation with \l, \L, \u or <\U> in double-quoted stringsand in s/// substitutions; and case-independent regular expressionpattern matching using the i modifier.

Finally, LC_CTYPE affects the POSIX character-class test functions -isalpha(), islower() and so on. For example, if you move from the ``C''locale to a 7-bit Scandinavian one, you may find - possibly to yoursurprise - that ``|'' moves from the ispunct() class to isalpha().

Note: A broken or malicious LC_CTYPE locale definition may resultin clearly ineligible characters being considered to be alphanumeric byyour application. For strict matching of (unaccented) letters anddigits - for example, in command strings - locale-aware applicationsshould use \w inside a no locale block. See the section on SECURITY.

Category LC_NUMERIC: Numeric Formatting

When in the scope of use locale, Perl obeys the LC_NUMERIClocale information, which controls application's idea of how numbersshould be formatted for human readability by the printf(), sprintf(),and write() functions. String to numeric conversion by thePOSIX::strtod() function is also affected. In most implementations theonly effect is to change the character used for the decimal point -perhaps from `.' to `,': these functions aren't aware of such nicetiesas thousands separation and so on. (See the section on The localeconv function ifyou care about these things.)

Note that output produced by print() is never affected by thecurrent locale: it is independent of whether use locale or nolocale is in effect, and corresponds to what you'd get from printf()in the ``C'' locale. The same is true for Perl's internal conversionsbetween numeric and string formats:

        use POSIX qw(strtod);        use locale;

        $n = 5/2;   # Assign numeric 2.5 to $n

        $a = " $n"; # Locale-independent conversion to string

        print "half five is $n\n";       # Locale-independent output

        printf "half five is %g\n", $n;  # Locale-dependent output

        print "DECIMAL POINT IS COMMA\n"            if $n == (strtod("2,5"))[0]; # Locale-dependent conversion

Category LC_MONETARY: Formatting of monetary amounts

The C standard defines the LC_MONETARY category, but no function thatis affected by its contents. (Those with experience of standardscommittees will recognize that the working group decided to punt on theissue.) Consequently, Perl takes no notice of it. If you really wantto use LC_MONETARY, you can query its contents - see the section on The localeconvfunction - and use the information that it returns in yourapplication's own formatting of currency amounts. However, you may wellfind that the information, though voluminous and complex, does not quitemeet your requirements: currency formatting is a hard nut to crack.

LC_TIME

The output produced by POSIX::strftime(), which builds a formattedhuman-readable date/time string, is affected by the current LC_TIMElocale. Thus, in a French locale, the output produced by the %Bformat element (full month name) for the first month of the year wouldbe ``janvier''. Here's how to get a list of the long month names in thecurrent locale:

        use POSIX qw(strftime);        for (0..11) {            $long_month_name[$_] =                strftime("%B", 0, 0, 0, 1, $_, 96);        }

Note: use locale isn't needed in this example: as a function whichexists only to generate locale-dependent results, strftime() alwaysobeys the current LC_TIME locale.

Other categories

The remaining locale category, LC_MESSAGES (possibly supplemented byothers in particular implementations) is not currently used by Perl -except possibly to affect the behavior of library functions called byextensions which are not part of the standard Perl distribution.

SECURITY

While the main discussion of Perl security issues can be found inthe perlsec manpage, a discussion of Perl's locale handling would be incompleteif it did not draw your attention to locale-dependent security issues.Locales - particularly on systems which allow unprivileged users tobuild their own locales - are untrustworthy. A malicious (or just plainbroken) locale can make a locale-aware application give unexpectedresults. Here are a few possibilities:

•: Regular expression checks for safe file names or mail addresses using\w may be spoofed by an LC_CTYPE locale which claims thatcharacters such as ``>'' and ``|'' are alphanumeric.
•: String interpolation with case-mapping, as in, say, $dest ="C:\U$name.$ext", may produce dangerous results if a bogus LC_CTYPEcase-mapping table is in effect.
•: If the decimal point character in the LC_NUMERIC locale issurreptitiously changed from a dot to a comma, sprintf("%g",0.123456e3) produces a string result of ``123,456''. Many people wouldinterpret this as one hundred and twenty-three thousand, four hundredand fifty-six.
•: A sneaky LC_COLLATE locale could result in the names of students with``D'' grades appearing ahead of those with ``A"s.
•: An application which takes the trouble to use the information inLC_MONETARY may format debits as if they were credits and vice versaif that locale has been subverted. Or it make may make payments in USdollars instead of Hong Kong dollars.
•: The date and day names in dates formatted by strftime() could bemanipulated to advantage by a malicious user able to subvert theLC_DATE locale. ("Look - it says I wasn't in the building onSunday.")

Such dangers are not peculiar to the locale system: any aspect of anapplication's environment which may maliciously be modified presentssimilar challenges. Similarly, they are not specific to Perl: anyprogramming language which allows you to write programs which takeaccount of their environment exposes you to these issues.

Perl cannot protect you from all of the possibilities shown in theexamples - there is no substitute for your own vigilance - but, whenuse locale is in effect, Perl uses the tainting mechanism (seethe perlsec manpage) to mark string results which become locale-dependent, andwhich may be untrustworthy in consequence. Here is a summary of thetainting behavior of operators and functions which may be affected bythe locale:

Comparison operators (lt, le, ge, gt and cmp):: Scalar true/false (or less/equal/greater) result is never tainted.
Case-mapping interpolation (with \l, \L, \u or <\U>): Result string containing interpolated material is tainted ifuse locale is in effect.
Matching operator (m//):: Scalar true/false result never tainted.
Subpatterns, either delivered as an array-context result, or as $1 etc.are tainted if use locale is in effect, and the subpattern regularexpression contains \w (to match an alphanumeric character), \W(non-alphanumeric character), \s (white-space character), or \S(non white-space character). The matched pattern variable, $&, $`(pre-match), $' (post-match), and $+ (last match) are also tainted ifuse locale is in effect and the regular expression contains \w,\W, \s, or \S.
Substitution operator (s///):: Has the same behavior as the match operator. Also, the leftoperand of =~ becomes tainted when use locale in effect,if it is modified as a result of a substitution based on a regularexpression match involving \w, \W, \s, or \S; or ofcase-mapping with \l, \L,\u or <\U>.
In-memory formatting function (sprintf()):: Result is tainted if ``use locale'' is in effect.
Output formatting functions (printf() and write()):: Success/failure result is never tainted.
Case-mapping functions (lc(), lcfirst(), uc(), ucfirst()):: Results are tainted if use locale is in effect.
POSIX locale-dependent functions (localeconv(), strcoll(), strftime(), strxfrm()):: Results are never tainted.
POSIX character class tests (isalnum(), isalpha(), isdigit(), isgraph(), islower(), isprint(), ispunct(), isspace(), isupper(), isxdigit()):: True/false results are never tainted.

Three examples illustrate locale-dependent tainting.The first program, which ignores its locale, won't run: a value takendirectly from the command line may not be used to name an output filewhen taint checks are enabled.

        #/usr/local/bin/perl -T        # Run with taint checking

        # Command line sanity check omitted...        $tainted_output_file = shift;

        open(F, ">$tainted_output_file")            or warn "Open of $untainted_output_file failed: $!\n";

The program can be made to run by ``laundering'' the tainted value througha regular expression: the second example - which still ignores localeinformation - runs, creating the file named on its command lineif it can.

        #/usr/local/bin/perl -T

        $tainted_output_file = shift;        $tainted_output_file =~ m%[\w/]+%;        $untainted_output_file = $&;

        open(F, ">$untainted_output_file")            or warn "Open of $untainted_output_file failed: $!\n";

Compare this with a very similar program which is locale-aware:

        #/usr/local/bin/perl -T

        $tainted_output_file = shift;        use locale;        $tainted_output_file =~ m%[\w/]+%;        $localized_output_file = $&;

        open(F, ">$localized_output_file")            or warn "Open of $localized_output_file failed: $!\n";

This third program fails to run because $& is tainted: it is the resultof a match involving \w when use locale is in effect.

ENVIRONMENT

PERL_BADLANG: A string that can suppress Perl's warning about failed locale settingsat startup. Failure can occur if the locale support in the operatingsystem is lacking (broken) is some way - or if you mistyped the name ofa locale when you set up your environment. If this environment variableis absent, or has a value which does not evaluate to integer zero - thatis "0" or "" - Perl will complain about locale setting failures.
NOTE: PERL_BADLANG only gives you a way to hide the warning message.The message tells about some problem in your system's locale support,and you should investigate what the problem is.

The following environment variables are not specific to Perl: They arepart of the standardized (ISO C, XPG4, POSIX 1.c) setlocale() methodfor controlling an application's opinion on data.

LC_ALL: LC_ALL is the ``override-all'' locale environment variable. If it isset, it overrides all the rest of the locale environment variables.
LC_CTYPE: In the absence of LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE chooses the character typelocale. In the absence of both LC_ALL and LC_CTYPE, LANGchooses the character type locale.
LC_COLLATE: In the absence of LC_ALL, LC_COLLATE chooses the collation(sorting) locale. In the absence of both LC_ALL and LC_COLLATE,LANG chooses the collation locale.
LC_MONETARY: In the absence of LC_ALL, LC_MONETARY chooses the monetaryformatting locale. In the absence of both LC_ALL and LC_MONETARY,LANG chooses the monetary formatting locale.
LC_NUMERIC: In the absence of LC_ALL, LC_NUMERIC chooses the numeric formatlocale. In the absence of both LC_ALL and LC_NUMERIC, LANGchooses the numeric format.
LC_TIME: In the absence of LC_ALL, LC_TIME chooses the date and timeformatting locale. In the absence of both LC_ALL and LC_TIME,LANG chooses the date and time formatting locale.
LANG: LANG is the ``catch-all'' locale environment variable. If it is set, itis used as the last resort after the overall LC_ALL and thecategory-specific LC_....

NOTES

Backward compatibility

Versions of Perl prior to 5.004 mostly ignored locale information,generally behaving as if something similar to the "C" locale (seethe section on The setlocale function) was always in force, even if the programenvironment suggested otherwise. By default, Perl still behaves thisway so as to maintain backward compatibility. If you want a Perlapplication to pay attention to locale information, you must usethe use locale pragma (see the section on The use locale Pragma) toinstruct it to do so.

Versions of Perl from 5.002 to 5.003 did use the LC_CTYPEinformation if that was available, that is, \w did understand whatare the letters according to the locale environment variables.The problem was that the user had no control over the feature:if the C library supported locales, Perl used them.

I18N:Collate obsolete

In versions of Perl prior to 5.004 per-locale collation was possibleusing the I18N::Collate library module. This module is now mildlyobsolete and should be avoided in new applications. The LC_COLLATEfunctionality is now integrated into the Perl core language: One canuse locale-specific scalar data completely normally with use locale,so there is no longer any need to juggle with the scalar references ofI18N::Collate.

Sort speed and memory use impacts

Comparing and sorting by locale is usually slower than the defaultsorting; slow-downs of two to four times have been observed. It willalso consume more memory: once a Perl scalar variable has participatedin any string comparison or sorting operation obeying the localecollation rules, it will take 3-15 times more memory than before. (Theexact multiplier depends on the string's contents, the operating systemand the locale.) These downsides are dictated more by the operatingsystem's implementation of the locale system than by Perl.

write() and LC_NUMERIC

Formats are the only part of Perl which unconditionally use informationfrom a program's locale; if a program's environment specifies anLC_NUMERIC locale, it is always used to specify the decimal pointcharacter in formatted output. Formatted output cannot be controlled byuse locale because the pragma is tied to the block structure of theprogram, and, for historical reasons, formats exist outside that blockstructure.

Freely available locale definitions

There is a large collection of locale definitions atftp://dkuug.dk/i18n/WG15-collection. You should be aware that it isunsupported, and is not claimed to be fit for any purpose. If yoursystem allows the installation of arbitrary locales, you may find thedefinitions useful as they are, or as a basis for the development ofyour own locales.

I18n and l10n

``Internationalization'' is often abbreviated as i18n because its firstand last letters are separated by eighteen others. (You may guess whythe internalin ... internaliti ... i18n tends to get abbreviated.) Inthe same way, ``localization'' is often abbreviated to l10n.

An imperfect standard

Internationalization, as defined in the C and POSIX standards, can becriticized as incomplete, ungainly, and having too large a granularity.(Locales apply to a whole process, when it would arguably be more usefulto have them apply to a single thread, window group, or whatever.) Theyalso have a tendency, like standards groups, to divide the world intonations, when we all know that the world can equally well be dividedinto bankers, bikers, gamers, and so on. But, for now, it's the onlystandard we've got. This may be construed as a bug.

BUGS

Broken systems

In certain system environments the operating system's locale supportis broken and cannot be fixed or used by Perl. Such deficiencies canand will result in mysterious hangs and/or Perl core dumps when theuse locale is in effect. When confronted with such a system,please report in excruciating detail to <perlbugAATTperl.com>, andcomplain to your vendor: maybe some bug fixes exist for these problemsin your operating system. Sometimes such bug fixes are called anoperating system upgrade.

HISTORY

Jarkko Hietaniemi's original perli18n.pod heavily hacked by DominicDunlop, assisted by the perl5-porters.

Last update: Wed Jan 22 11:04:58 EST 1997

This document was created byman2html,using the manual pages.