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### 32.12 Locales

In POSIX, locales control which language to use in language-related features. These Emacs variables control how Emacs interacts with these features.

Variable: locale-coding-system

  This variable specifies the coding system to use for decoding system error messages and—on X Window system only—keyboard input, for sending batch output to the standard output and error streams, for encoding the format argument to `format-time-string`, and for decoding the return value of `format-time-string`.

Variable: system-messages-locale

  This variable specifies the locale to use for generating system error messages. Changing the locale can cause messages to come out in a different language or in a different orthography. If the variable is `nil`, the locale is specified by environment variables in the usual POSIX fashion.

Variable: system-time-locale

  This variable specifies the locale to use for formatting time values. Changing the locale can cause messages to appear according to the conventions of a different language. If the variable is `nil`, the locale is specified by environment variables in the usual POSIX fashion.

Function: locale-info item

  This function returns locale data item for the current POSIX locale, if available. item should be one of these symbols:

  `codeset`

    Return the character set as a string (locale item `CODESET`).

  `days`

    Return a 7-element vector of day names (locale items `DAY_1` through `DAY_7`);

  `months`

    Return a 12-element vector of month names (locale items `MON_1` through `MON_12`).

  `paper`

    Return a list `(width height)` for the default paper size measured in millimeters (locale items `PAPER_WIDTH` and `PAPER_HEIGHT`).

  If the system can’t provide the requested information, or if item is not one of those symbols, the value is `nil`. All strings in the return value are decoded using `locale-coding-system`. See Locales in The GNU Libc Manual, for more information about locales and locale items.

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