The mklocale utility reads a LC_CTYPE source file from standard input and produces a LC_CTYPE binary file on standard output suitable for placement in /usr/share/locale/ language /LC_CTYPE.

The format of src-file is quite simple. It consists of a series of lines which start with a keyword and have associated data following. C style comments are used to place comments in the file.

Following options are available:

• -d Turns on debugging messages.
• -o Specify output file.

Besides the keywords which will be listed below, the following are valid tokens in src-file:

• RUNE A RUNE may be any of the following:
  • ’x’ The ASCII character x.
  • ’\x’ The ANSI C character \x where \x is one of \a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t, or \v.
  • 0x[0-9a-z]* A hexadecimal number representing a rune code.
  • 0[0-7]* An octal number representing a rune code.
  • [1-9][0-9]* A decimal number representing a rune code.
• STRING A string enclosed in double quotes (").
• THRU Either ... or -. Used to indicate ranges.
• literal The follow characters are taken literally:
  • <([ Used to start a mapping. All are equivalent.
  • >)] Used to end a mapping. All are equivalent.
  • : Used as a delimiter in mappings.

Key words which should only appear once are:

• ENCODING Followed by a STRING which indicates the encoding mechanism to be used for this locale. The current encodings are:
  • BIG5 The "Big5" encoding of Chinese.
  • EUC EUC encoding as used by several vendors of systems.
  • GB18030 PRC national standard for encoding of Chinese text.
  • GB2312 Older PRC national standard for encoding Chinese text.
  • GBK A widely used encoding method for Chinese text, backwards compatible with GB 2312-1980.
  • MSKanji The method of encoding Japanese used by Microsoft, loosely based on JIS. Also known as "Shift JIS" and "SJIS".
  • NONE No translation and the default.
  • UTF-8 The UTF-8 transformation format of ISO 10646 as defined by RFC 2279.
• VARIABLE This keyword must be followed by a single tab or space character, after which encoding specific data is placed. Currently only the EUC encoding requires variable data. See euc(5) for further details.
• INVALID (obsolete) A single RUNE follows and is used as the invalid rune for this locale.

The following keywords may appear multiple times and have the following format for data:

• <RUNE1 RUNE2> RUNE1 is mapped to RUNE2.
• <RUNE1 THRU RUNEn: RUNE2> Runes RUNE1 through RUNEn are mapped to RUNE2 through RUNE2 + n-1.

• MAPLOWER Defines the tolower mappings. RUNE2 is the lower case representation of RUNE1.
• MAPUPPER Defines the toupper mappings. RUNE2 is the upper case representation of RUNE1.
• TODIGIT Defines a map from runes to their digit value. RUNE2 is the integer value represented by RUNE1. For example, the ASCII character ‘0’ would map to the decimal value 0. Only values up to 255 are allowed.

The following keywords may appear multiple times and have the following format for data:

• RUNE This rune has the property defined by the keyword.
• RUNE1 THRU RUNEn All the runes between and including RUNE1 and RUNEn have the property defined by the keyword.

• ALPHA Defines runes which are alphabetic, printable and graphic.
• CONTROL Defines runes which are control characters.
• DIGIT Defines runes which are decimal digits, printable and graphic.
• GRAPH Defines runes which are graphic and printable.
• LOWER Defines runes which are lower case, printable and graphic.
• PUNCT Defines runes which are punctuation, printable and graphic.
• SPACE Defines runes which are spaces.
• UPPER Defines runes which are upper case, printable and graphic.
• XDIGIT Defines runes which are hexadecimal digits, printable and graphic.
• BLANK Defines runes which are blank.
• PRINT Defines runes which are printable.
• IDEOGRAM Defines runes which are ideograms, printable and graphic.
• SPECIAL Defines runes which are special characters, printable and graphic.
• PHONOGRAM Defines runes which are phonograms, printable and graphic.
• SWIDTH0 Defines runes with display width 0.
• SWIDTH1 Defines runes with display width 1.
• SWIDTH2 Defines runes with display width 2.
• SWIDTH3 Defines runes with display width 3.

If no display width explicitly defined, width 1 assumed for printable runes by default.

colldef(1), setlocale(3), wcwidth(3), big5(5), euc(5), gb18030(5), gb2312(5), gbk(5), mskanji(5), utf8(5)

The mklocale utility first appeared in

The mklocale utility is overly simplistic.