This information includes the appropriate formats and characters for date and time, currency, and numeric values. A message catalog is a file or storage area that contains program messages, command prompts, and responses to prompts for a particular language. Chapter 3 describes the messaging system. Language Announcement Language announcement is the mechanism by which language, cultural data, and codeset requirements are set either for the system as a whole, by an application, or by individual users. Language announcement is performed by setting a locale name in a set of reserved environment variables.
Users can also set locale variables on a per-process basis.
Typically, internationalized programs read locale variables at run time and use them to attach a particular instance of localization data to the programs' operational environment. However, programs can also set these variables internally when appropriate. Therefore, the binding to a particular locale need not be general for all parts of a program. Within one execution cycle, different parts of the program can request different localizations. This section defines terms used extensively in this guide.