CODEWITHSUNDEEP
postgresqllocale
ericj
ericj

Reputation: 2291

How to make visible the locale in postgres?

I was wondering if I could make visible the chosen locale. I do (on windows),

>bin\initdb --locale=en-us --encoding=utf-8 -U postgres -W clus1
>bin\pg_ctl.exe -D clus1 -l logfile2 start
>psql -U postgres
postgres=# select now();
              now
-------------------------------
  2022-03-07 21:15:07.56299+01

>bin\pg_ctl.exe -D clus1 -l logfile2 stop
>rmdir /s clus1

Now I choose another locale,

>bin\initdb --locale=nl-nl --encoding=utf-8 -U postgres -W clus1
>bin\pg_ctl.exe -D clus1 -l logfile2 start
>psql -U postgres
postgres=# select now();
              now
-------------------------------
 2022-03-07 21:16:30.071371+01

I thought now() would be in Dutch, but is isn't. Why not, and how can I make the locale visible, so check the chosen locale?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1858

Answers (1)

Laurenz Albe
Laurenz Albe

Reputation: 246503

The locale consists of several parts:

  • lc_collate: the rules to compare and sort strings

  • lc_ctype: the rules to determine what type a character is (letter, digit, space, ...)

  • lc_messages: the language for error and log messages

  • lc_monetary: the language to use for currency format codes in to_char for numbers

    To see the effect of lc_monetary, try

    SELECT to_char(100, '999L');

  • lc_numeric: the language to use for decimal comma and group separator format codes in to_char for numbers

    To see the effect of lc_numeric, try

    SELECT to_char(1000000.50, '9G999G999D00L');

  • lc_time: the language to use for week day and month name format codes in to_char for timestamps, log_filename and such

    To see the effect of lc_numeric, try

    SELECT to_char(current_timestamp, 'FMDAY, DD. FMMONTH');

You can find the setting of each of them with SHOW:

SHOW lc_collate;

The type output functions for date/time and numeric data types don't use the locale settings, so the output of now() not affected by the locale.

Upvotes: 2

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