The locale module opens access to the POSIX locale database and functionality. The POSIX locale mechanism allows programmers to deal with certain cultural issues in an application, without requiring the programmer to know all the specifics of each country where the software is executed.
The locale module is implemented on top of the _locale module, which in turn uses an ANSI C locale implementation if available.
The locale module defines the following exception and functions:
If no value is specified, the current setting for the category is returned.
setlocale() is not thread safe on most systems. Applications typically start with a call of
import locale locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL,"")
decimal_point specifies the decimal point used in
floating point number representations for the LC_NUMERIC
category.
grouping is a sequence of numbers specifying at which
relative positions the thousands_sep is expected. If the
sequence is terminated with CHAR_MAX, no further
grouping is performed. If the sequence terminates with a 0, the last
group size is repeatedly used.
thousands_sep is the character used between groups.
int_curr_symbol specifies the international currency
symbol from the LC_MONETARY category.
currency_symbol is the local currency symbol.
mon_decimal_point is the decimal point used in monetary
values.
mon_thousands_sep is the separator for grouping of
monetary values.
mon_grouping has the same format as the grouping
key; it is used for monetary values.
positive_sign and negative_sign gives the sign
used for positive and negative monetary quantities.
int_frac_digits and frac_digits specify the number
of fractional digits used in the international and local formatting
of monetary values.
p_cs_precedes and n_cs_precedes specifies whether
the currency symbol precedes the value for positive or negative
values.
p_sep_by_space and n_sep_by_space specifies
whether there is a space between the positive or negative value and
the currency symbol.
p_sign_posn and n_sign_posn indicate how the
sign should be placed for positive and negative monetary values.
The possible values for p_sign_posn and
n_sign_posn are given below.
| Value | Explanation |
|---|---|
0 |
Currency and value are surrounded by parentheses. |
1 |
The sign should precede the value and currency symbol. |
2 |
The sign should follow the value and currency symbol. |
3 |
The sign should immediately precede the value. |
4 |
The sign should immediately follow the value. |
LC_MAX |
Nothing is specified in this locale. |
0, depending on whether string1
collates before or after string2 or is equal to it.
= 0])
% operator. For floating point values, the decimal point
is modified if appropriate. If grouping is true, also takes the
grouping into account.
str(float), but takes the decimal point into
account.
Example:
>>> import locale
>>> loc = locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL) # get current locale
>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, "de") # use German locale
>>> locale.strcoll("f\344n", "foo") # compare a string containing an umlaut
>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, "") # use user's preferred locale
>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, "C") # use default (C) locale
>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, loc) # restore saved locale