locale:tldr:fb216

The "locale" command is used in computer systems to display or modify the current locale settings, which determine the language, formatting, and cultural conventions used by various programs and utilities on the system.

When executed without any options or arguments, the "locale" command will display the current locale settings. It will typically provide information about the current language, character encoding, date and time formatting, currency symbol, numeric formatting, and other localization-related settings.

For example, the output of the "locale" command may look like this:

LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
...

Here, "enUS.UTF-8" refers to the English language for the United States, using the UTF-8 character encoding. The "LC" variables represent different aspects of localization, such as character classification (CTYPE), numeric formatting (NUMERIC), and date and time formatting (TIME), among others.

In addition to displaying the current locale settings, the "locale" command can also be used to modify the locale settings. By providing an argument to the command, you can change the current locale settings temporarily for the current session. For example, running "locale LANG=en_GB.UTF-8" would change the language to British English with UTF-8 encoding for the duration of the session.

The "locale" command is particularly useful in scripting or programming tasks where you need to ensure proper localization and formatting of text and data based on the desired language and cultural conventions.