locale.alias(5)

locale.alias(5) — File Formats Manual, but make it cute 🦋

okay so bestie, welcome to the locale.alias(5) page. It’s a File Formats Manual entry, and it’s literally about the locale name alias data base. no cap, we’re getting into it.

💖 NAME 💖

locale.alias — Locale name alias data base

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

So the locale.alias database file lives at /usr/share/locale/locale.alias, and it’s used by the locale command and the X Window System. It describes aliases for the locales, and every line is giving this format:

<alias> <localename>

Here’s the vibe check on <localename>: it’s in the POSIX format xx_YY.CHARSET. The first two letters, xx, are the ISO-639 Language code. The next two, YY, are the ISO-3166 Country code. And the Charset is one of the character sets — the ones listed in /usr/share/i18n/charsets. Slay. ✨

The aliases can be free text; they’re normally the English language name, or simpler versions of the POSIX locale name. periodt. 💅

Lines beginning with a Hash — "#" — are treated as comments and ignored. Not me ignoring them too, respectfully. 🙈

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• locale(1)
• localedef(1)

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Alastair McKinstry <mckinstry@computer.org>

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mwah 💋 this page is from Debian GNU/Linux, January 2002, and it’s locale.alias(5). bye bestie, go read those aliases 🫶✨