Python locale error: unsupported locale setting

Question

Why do I get the following error when doing this in python:

>>> import locale
>>> print str( locale.getlocale() )
(None, None)
>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'de_DE')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/locale.py", line 531, in setlocale
    return _setlocale(category, locale)
locale.Error: unsupported locale setting

This works with other locales like fr or nl as well. I'm using Ubuntu 11.04.

Update: Doing the following did not yield anything:

dpkg-reconfigure locales
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
    LANGUAGE = (unset),
    LC_ALL = (unset),
    LC_CTYPE = "UTF-8",
    LANG = (unset)
    are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory

Answer 1

Run following commands

export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"
export LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

It will solve this.

Make sure to match the .UTF-8 part to the actual syntax found in the output of locale -a eg .utf8 on some systems.

Answer 2

According to this link , it solved by entering this command:

export LC_ALL=C

Answer 3

You probably do not have any de_DE locale available.

You can view a list of available locales with the locale -a command. For example, on my machine:

$ locale -a
C
C.UTF-8
en_AG
en_AG.utf8
en_AU.utf8
en_BW.utf8
en_CA.utf8
en_DK.utf8
en_GB.utf8
en_HK.utf8
en_IE.utf8
en_IN
en_IN.utf8
en_NG
en_NG.utf8
en_NZ.utf8
en_PH.utf8
en_SG.utf8
en_US.utf8
en_ZA.utf8
en_ZM
en_ZM.utf8
en_ZW.utf8
it_CH.utf8
it_IT.utf8
POSIX

Note that if you want to set the locale to it_IT you must also specify the .utf8 :

>>> import locale
>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'it_IT')   # error!
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/locale.py", line 539, in setlocale
    return _setlocale(category, locale)
locale.Error: unsupported locale setting
>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'it_IT.utf8')
'it_IT.utf8'

To install a new locale use:

sudo apt-get install language-pack-id

where id is the language code (taken from here )

After you have installed the locale you should follow Julien Palard advice and reconfigure the locales with:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

Answer 4

One of the above answer provides the solution:

export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"
export LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

However, if you are providing your code to work on the client machine then this is a bad approach. I also tried executing the above commands using os.system(), but still it doesn't work.

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

Answer 5

More permanent solution would be to fill the missing values, in the output shown by command: locale

Output from locale is:

 $ locale
LANG=en_US.utf8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="en_US.utf8"
LC_NUMERIC=es_ES.utf8
LC_TIME=es_ES.utf8
LC_COLLATE="en_US.utf8"
LC_MONETARY=es_ES.utf8
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.utf8"
LC_PAPER=es_ES.utf8
LC_NAME="en_US.utf8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.utf8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.utf8"
LC_MEASUREMENT=es_ES.utf8
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.utf8"
LC_ALL=

To Fill the missing values edit ~/.bashrc :

 $ vim ~/.bashrc

Add the following lines after the above command (suppose you want en_US.UTF-8 to be your language):

export LANGUAGE="en_US.UTF-8"
export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"

If this file is ReadOnly you would be needing to follow the steps mentioned by The GeekyBoy . The answer given by Dr Beco in Superuser has details relating to saving readonly files.

After saving the file do:

$ source ~/.bashrc

Now you wont be facing the same problem anymore.

Answer 6

如果您使用的是 Debian（或 Debian fork），您可以使用以下命令添加语言环境：

dpkg-reconfigure locales

Answer 7

You error clearly says, you are trying to use locale something was not there.

>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'de_DE')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/locale.py", line 581, in setlocale
    return _setlocale(category, locale)
locale.Error: unsupported locale setting

locale.Error: unsupported locale setting

To check available setting, use locale -a

deb@deb-Latitude-E7470:/ambot$ locale -a
C
C.UTF-8
en_AG
en_AG.utf8
en_AU.utf8
en_BW.utf8
en_CA.utf8
en_DK.utf8
en_GB.utf8
en_HK.utf8
en_IE.utf8
en_IN
en_IN.utf8
en_NG
en_NG.utf8
en_NZ.utf8
en_PH.utf8
en_SG.utf8
en_US.utf8
en_ZA.utf8
en_ZM
en_ZM.utf8
en_ZW.utf8
POSIX

so you can use one among,

>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'en_AG.utf8')
'en_AG.utf8'
>>> 

for de_DE

This file can either be adjusted manually or updated using the tool, update-locale.

update-locale LANG=de_DE.UTF-8

Answer 8

在 Arch Linux 上，我可以通过运行sudo locale-gen来解决这个问题

Answer 9

For the record, I had this same problem, but none of the solutions worked. I had upgraded my computer and migrated my PC. I had aa mixed locale english and spanish:

$ locale
LANG=en_US.utf8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="en_US.utf8"
LC_NUMERIC=es_ES.utf8
LC_TIME=es_ES.utf8
LC_COLLATE="en_US.utf8"
LC_MONETARY=es_ES.utf8
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.utf8"
LC_PAPER=es_ES.utf8
LC_NAME="en_US.utf8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.utf8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.utf8"
LC_MEASUREMENT=es_ES.utf8
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.utf8"
LC_ALL=

But, on my new Debian installation, I just selected english as locale. Which finally worked was to reconfigure locales package to add and generate spanish too.

$ grep -v "#" /etc/locale.gen 
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
es_ES.UTF-8 UTF-8

Answer 10

Place it in the Dockerfile above the ENV .

# make the "en_US.UTF-8" locale so postgres will be utf-8 enabled by default
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y locales && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* \
    && localedef -i en_US -c -f UTF-8 -A /usr/share/locale/locale.alias en_US.UTF-8

ENV LANG en_US.UTF-8

Answer 11

Just open the .bashrc file and add this

export LC_ALL=C

and then type source .bashrc in terminal.

Answer 12

• run this command locale to get what locale is used. Such as:

LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_US:en
LC_CTYPE=zh_CN.UTF-8
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

• search for the listed locales list in first step in /etc/locale-gen file. Uncomment to used ones
• run locale-gen to generate newly added locales

Answer 13

In my opinion, the easiest way to setup the local locale in python{,3} is:

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

Then, locale aware stuff just works, if you're on a decent linux distro, and should work on binary distributions of the other OSes as well (or that's a bug IMHO).

>>> import datetime as dt
>>> print(dt.date.today().strftime("%A %d. %B %Y"))
Sonntag 11. Dezember 2016

Answer 14

This error can occur, if you have just added a new locale. You need to restart the python interactive shell ( quit( ) and python ) to get access to it.

Answer 15

If I were you, I would use BABEL: http://babel.pocoo.org/en/latest/index.html

I got the same issue here using Docker, I've tried every single step and didn't work well, always getting locale error, so I decided to use BABEL, and everything worked well.

Answer 16

For those deploying a docker image and using a locale that isn't shown in the locale -a command, add this line to your Dockerfile
RUN apt-get install -y locales

This should add all locales to your image, I used de_DE which is not part of AWS default Ubuntu server.

Answer 17

In trying to get python to spit out names in specific locale I landed here with same problem.

In pursuing the answer, things got a little mystical I find.

I found that python code.

import locale
print locale.getdefaultlocale()
>> ('en_DK', 'UTF-8')

And indeed locale.setlocale(locale.LC_TIME, 'en_DK.UTF-8') works

Using tips here I tested further to see what is available using python code

import locale
loc_list = [(a,b) for a,b in locale.locale_alias.items() ]
loc_size = len(loc_list)
print loc_size,'entries'

for loc in loc_list:
    try:
        locale.setlocale(locale.LC_TIME, loc[1])
        print 'SUCCES set {:12} ({})'.format(loc[1],loc[0])
    except:
        pass

which yields

858 entries
SUCCES set en_US.UTF-8  (univ)
SUCCES set C            (c.ascii)
SUCCES set C            (c.en)
SUCCES set C            (posix-utf2)
SUCCES set C            (c)
SUCCES set C            (c_c)
SUCCES set C            (c_c.c)
SUCCES set en_IE.UTF-8  (en_ie.utf8@euro)
SUCCES set en_US.UTF-8  (universal.utf8@ucs4)
SUCCES set C            (posix)
SUCCES set C            (english_united-states.437)
SUCCES set en_US.UTF-8  (universal)

Of which only above is working! But the en_DK.UTF-8 is not in this list, though it works!?!? What?? And the python generated locale list do contain a lot of combos of da and DK, which I am looking for, but again no UTF-8 for da/DK...

I am on a Point Linux distro (Debian based), and here locale says amongst other LC_TIME="en_DK.UTF-8" , which I know works, but not the locale I need.

locale -a says

C
C.UTF-8
en_DK.utf8
en_US.utf8
POSIX

So definitely need to install other locale , which i did by editing /etc/locale.gen , uncomment needed line da_DK.UTF-8 UTF-8 and run command locale-gen

Now locale.setlocale(locale.LC_TIME, 'da_DK.UTF-8') works too, and I can get my localized day and month names.

My Conclision:

Python : locale.locale_alias is not at all helpfull in finding available locales!!!

Linux : It is quite easy to get locale list and install new locale. A lot of help available.

Windows : I have been investigating a little, but nothing conclusive. There are though posts leading to answers, but I have not felt the urge to pursue it.

Answer 18

if I understand correctly, the main source of error here is the exact syntax of the locale-name. Especially as it seems to differ between distributions. I've seen mentioned here in different answers/comments:

de_DE.utf8
de_DE.UTF-8

Even though this is obviously the same for a human being, the same does not hold for your standard deterministic algorithm.

So you will probably do something along the lines of:

DESIRED_LOCALE=de
DESIRED_LOCALE_COUNTRY=DE
DESIRED_CODEPAGE_RE=\.[Uu][Tt][Ff].?8
if [ $(locale -a | grep -cE "${DESIRED_LOCALE}_${DESIRED_LOCALE_COUNTRY}${DESIRED_CODEPAGE_RE}") -eq 1 ]
then
    export LC_ALL=$(locale -a | grep -m1 -E "${DESIRED_LOCALE}_${DESIRED_LOCALE_COUNTRY}${DESIRED_CODEPAGE_RE}")
    export LANG=$LC_ALL
else
    echo "Not exactly one desired locale definition found: $(locale -a | grep -E "${DESIRED_LOCALE}_${DESIRED_LOCALE_COUNTRY}${DESIRED_CODEPAGE_RE}")" >&2
fi

Answer 19

python 查找 .UFT-8，但您可能有 .utf8 尝试使用 sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales 安装 .UFT-8 包

Answer 20

first, make sure you have the language pack installed by doing :

sudo apt-get install language-pack-en-base


sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

Answer 21

Not the answer for this question but this question helped me to find the answer for my problem.

I had this problem when using inside a Docker container.
I solved by installing locales , adding my language to the locale.gen file, executing locale-gen (it reads from locale.gen) and finally setting LANG to my language.

For example, my Dockerfile:

RUN apt-get install -y locales
RUN echo "pt_BR.UTF-8 UTF-8" >> /etc/locale.gen
RUN locale-gen pt_BR.UTF-8
ENV LANG=pt_BR.UTF-8