What is the correct way to set Python's locale on Windows?

Question

I’m attempting to sort a list of strings in a locale-aware manner. I’ve used the Babel library for other i18n-related tasks, but it doesn’t support sorting. Python’s locale module provides a strcoll function, but requires the locale of the process to be set to the one I want to work with. Kind of a pain, but I can live with it.

The problem is that I can’t seem to actually set the locale. The documentation for the locale module gives this example:

import locale
locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'de_DE')

When I run that, I get this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "C:Python26Liblocale.py", line 494, in setlocale
locale.Error: unsupported locale setting

What am I doing wrong?

Asked By: DNS

||

Source

Answer 1

It seems you’re using Windows. The locale strings are different there. Take a more precise look at the doc:

locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'de_DE') # use German locale; name might vary with platform

On Windows, I think it would be something like:

locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'deu_deu')

MSDN has a list of language strings and of country/region strings

Answered By: Schnouki

Answer 2

You should not pass an explicit locale to setlocale, it is wrong. Let it find out from the environment. You have to pass it an empty string

import locale
locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, '')

Answered By: u0b34a0f6ae

Answer 3

From locale.setlocale docs:

locale.setlocale(category, locale=None):
    """
    Set the locale for the given category.  The locale can be
    a string, an iterable of two strings (language code and encoding),
    or None.
    """"

Under Linux (especially Ubuntu) you can either use

locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'de_DE.UTF-8')

or

locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, ('de', 'utf-8'))

You will get the same error if the locale is not installed on the system. So, make sure you have the locale installed on your system:

$ locale -a # to list the currently installed locales
$ (sudo) locale-gen de_DE.UTF-8 # to install new locale

Answered By: Alexander Stefanov

Answer 4

Ubuntu

On Ubuntu you may have this problem because you don’t have that local installed on your system.

From shell try a:

$> locale -a

and check if you find the locale you are interested in. Otherwise you have to install it:

$> sudo apt-get install language-pack-XXX

where XXX is your language (in my case “xxx = it” , italian locale)
Then run a dpkg-reconfigure:

$> sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

After that try again in your python shell:

>>> import locale
>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL,'it_IT.UTF-8')

(this is for italian locale, which was what I needed)

Answered By: linello

Answer 5

This is the only correct way to use it for the German locale, as the OP is asking:

import locale

locale.setlocale(
    category=locale.LC_ALL,
    locale="German"  # Note: do not use "de_DE" as it doesn't work
)

Please note, though, that it is best to use this:

import locale

locale.setlocale(
    category=locale.LC_ALL,
    locale=""
)

This sets the locale for all categories to whatever the default locale settings are set for a user on their operating system. I strongly suggest that locale="" should be used always.

Answered By: Boštjan Mejak

Answer 6

I know this has been asked years ago, but I thought I’d try adding what I found out, using Python 3.6 on Windows:

import locale
for x in locale.windows_locale.values():
    print(x.replace('_','-'))

I tried some and that also seems to be a way of finding out, what’s available on Windows.

Good to know: This for some reason is not compatible to strptime() at the current stable version of Python

And then you simply set the locale:

locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, any_item_of_the_printed_strings)

Answered By: TheGeekGuy

What is the correct way to set Python's locale on Windows?

Question:

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Ubuntu