locale(3pm) Perl Programmers Reference Guide locale(3pm)

# [NAME](#NAME)

locale - Perl pragma to use or avoid POSIX locales for built-in operations

# [SYNOPSIS](#SYNOPSIS)

```
 my @x1 = sort @y;      # Native-platform/Unicode code point sort order
 {
     use locale;
     my @x2 = sort @y;  # Locale-defined sort order
 }
 my @x3 = sort @y;      # Native-platform/Unicode code point sort order
                        # again
 # Parameters to the pragma are to work around deficiencies in locale
 # handling that have since been fixed, and hence these are likely no
 # longer useful
 use locale qw(:ctype :collate);    # Only use the locale for character
                                    # classification (\w, \d, etc.), and
                                    # for string comparison operations
                                    # like '$a le $b' and sorting.
 use locale ':not_characters';      # Use the locale for everything but
                                    # character classification and string
                                    # comparison operations
 use locale ':!numeric';            # Use the locale for everything but
                                    # numeric-related operations
 use locale ':not_numeric';         # Same
 no locale;             # Turn off locale handling for the remainder of
                        # the scope.
```

# [DESCRIPTION](#DESCRIPTION)

This pragma tells the compiler to enable (or disable) the use of POSIX locales for built-in operations (for example, "LC\_CTYPE" for regular expressions, "LC\_COLLATE" for string comparison, and "LC\_NUMERIC" for number formatting). Each "use locale" or "no locale" affects statements to the end of the enclosing BLOCK.

The pragma is documented as part of perllocale.

2026-10-27 perl v5.44.0

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Document: locale(3pm) from perl 5.44.0-r4 (Chainguard OS)
Source: https://github.com/Perl/perl5.git