_create_locale, _wcreate_locale

Article
04/28/2015

Creates a locale object.

_locale_t _create_locale(
   int category,
   const char *locale 
);
_locale_t _wcreate_locale(
   int category,
   const wchar_t *locale 
);

Parameters

category
Category.
locale
Locale specifier.

Return Value

If a valid locale and category are given, returns the specified locale settings as a _locale_t object. The current locale settings of the program are not changed.

Remarks

The _create_locale function allows you to create an object that represents certain region-specific settings, for use in locale-specific versions of many CRT functions (functions with the _l suffix). The behavior is similar to setlocale, except that instead of applying the specified locale settings to the current environment, the settings are saved in a _locale_t structure that is returned. The _locale_t structure should be freed using _free_locale when it is no longer needed.

_wcreate_locale is a wide-character version of _create_locale; the locale argument to _wcreate_locale is a wide-character string. _wcreate_locale and _create_locale behave identically otherwise.

The category argument specifies the parts of the locale-specific behavior that are affected. The flags used for category and the parts of the program they affect are as shown in the following table.

LC_ALL
All categories, as listed below.
LC_COLLATE
The strcoll, _stricoll, wcscoll, _wcsicoll, strxfrm, _strncoll, _strnicoll, _wcsncoll, _wcsnicoll, and wcsxfrm functions.
LC_CTYPE
The character-handling functions (except isdigit, isxdigit, mbstowcs, and mbtowc, which are unaffected).
LC_MONETARY
Monetary-formatting information returned by the localeconv function.
LC_NUMERIC
Decimal-point character for the formatted output routines (such as printf), for the data-conversion routines, and for the non-monetary formatting information returned by localeconv. In addition to the decimal-point character, LC_NUMERIC sets the thousands separator and the grouping control string returned by localeconv.
LC_TIME
The strftime and wcsftime functions.

This function validates the category and locale parameters. If the category parameter is not one of the values given in the previous table or if locale is NULL, the function returns NULL.

The locale argument is a pointer to a string that specifies the locale. For information about the format of the locale argument, see Locale Names, Languages, and Country/Region Strings.

The locale argument can take a locale name, a language string, a language string and country/region code, a code page, or a language string, country/region code, and code page. The set of available locale names, languages, country/region codes, and code pages includes all that are supported by the Windows NLS API except the code pages that require more than two bytes per character—for example, UTF-7 and UTF-8. If you provide a code page like UTF-7 or UTF-8, _create_locale will fail and return NULL. The set of locale names supported by _create_locale are described in Locale Names, Languages, and Country/Region Strings. The set of language and country/region strings supported by _create_locale are listed in Language Strings and Country/Region Strings.

For more information about locale settings, see setlocale, _wsetlocale.

The previous name of this function, __create_locale (with two leading underscores), has been deprecated.

Requirements

Routine	Required header
_create_locale	<locale.h>
_wcreate_locale	<locale.h> or <wchar.h>

For additional compatibility information, see Compatibility.

Example

// crt_create_locale.c
// Sets the current locale to "de-CH" using the
// setlocale function and demonstrates its effect on the strftime
// function.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <locale.h>
#include <time.h>

int main(void)
{
       time_t ltime;
       struct tm thetime;
       unsigned char str[100];
       _locale_t locale;

       // Create a locale object representing the German (Switzerland) locale
       locale = _create_locale(LC_ALL, "de-CH");
       time (&ltime);
       _gmtime64_s(&thetime, &ltime);

       // %#x is the long date representation, appropriate to
       // the current locale
       //
       if (!_strftime_l((char *)str, 100, "%#x", 
                     (const struct tm *)&thetime, locale))
               printf("_strftime_l failed!\n");
       else
               printf("In de-CH locale, _strftime_l returns '%s'\n", 
                      str);

       _free_locale(locale);

       // Create a locale object representing the default C locale
       locale = _create_locale(LC_ALL, "C");
       time (&ltime);
       _gmtime64_s(&thetime, &ltime);

       if (!_strftime_l((char *)str, 100, "%#x", 
                     (const struct tm *)&thetime, locale))
               printf("_strftime_l failed!\n");
       else
               printf("In 'C' locale, _strftime_l returns '%s'\n", 
                      str);

       _free_locale(locale);
}

Sample Output

In de-CH locale, _strftime_l returns 'Samstag, 9. Februar 2002'
In 'C' locale, _strftime_l returns 'Saturday, February 09, 2002'

.NET Framework Equivalent

System::Globalization::CultureInfo Class

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