LOCALEHELPER(1)

✨ LOCALEHELPER ✨

okay so bestie, quick vibe check: this is localehelper, a manual page for the localehelper(1) command 💖

---

🌸 NAME 🌸

localehelper — generate locales and set internationalization environment variables 🦋

---

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

localehelper [-x locale[,locale...]] [intvar=locale[,locale-fallback...]]... [--] commandline

localehelper {-h | --help}

like literally that's the whole shape of it 🫶

---

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

here's the tea, it does these four things, in this order, no skipping:

1. Set each internationalization environment variable to locale (possibly falling back to locale-fallback).
2. Unset all other internationalization environment variables.
3. If needed, generate missing locales (in a temporary location).
4. Run the specified command.

step 3 is the main character moment fr fr, it's the whole reason this exists 🎀

---

👑 OPTIONS 👑

• -x locale[,locale...] — Make sure these locales are available, even when they are not used in any internationalization environment variable. like, you're manifesting them into existence whether or not anyone's using them ✨
• -h, --help — Show help message and exit. bye bestie 💖

---

🦋 ENVIRONMENT 🦋

The following environment variables can be set or unset by localehelper:

• LANG — fall-back for LC_* variables
• LC_COLLATE — affects regular expression matching and string collation.
• LC_CTYPE — affects regular expression matching, character classification, conversion, case-sensitive comparison, and wide character functions
• LC_MESSAGES — affects natural-language messages
• LC_MONETARY — affects monetary formatting
• LC_NUMERIC — affects number formatting
• LC_TIME — affects time and date formatting
• other LC_* — may affect other linguistic and cultural aspects
• LC_ALL — overrides all LC_*
• LANGUAGE — affects natural-language messages

---

🌈 the ones it leaves alone 🌈

The following environment variables may be used by users to announce specific localization requirements to applications, but are left intact by localehelper:

• NLSPATH — message catalogue path for catopen(3)
• TEXTDOMAIN — message catalogue domain for gettext(1)
• TEXTDOMAINDIR — message catalogue directory for gettext(1)

🫶 important: untouched. this tool is not coming for them. hands off. periodt.

---

🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

here's the flex, watch this:

 $ localehelper LANG=es_ES.UTF-8 locale mon | xargs -n1 -d ';'
enero
febrero
marzo
abril
mayo
junio
julio
agosto
septiembre
octubre
noviembre
diciembre

not me emotionally attached to diciembre 😭 twelve months, all correct, slay 💅

---

💜 SEE ALSO 💜

• locale(7)
• POSIX:2004 https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/basedefs/xbd_chap08.html#tag_08_02
• GNU gettext manual https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Setting-the-POSIX-Locale.html

---

and that's the whole page bestie, ily 🧚 this was localehelper version 0.1.7, dated 2026-01-21 — go set some locales, you've got this 💖✨🎀