Is there any universal method to detect the OS default language? (regardless what is the OS that is running the code)
import os os.getenv('LANG') The above code works under Linux, does it work under other OS?
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3 Answers
Please, you cannot trust locale module for detecting the OS language !!!
Whoever used this information without verifying before, will have a program failing over the world, with those users whose OS language is not the same as the region language.
They are different, (1)the OS language and (2)the localization info.
MSDN states that "A locale ID reflects the local conventions and language for a particular geographical region.", http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8w60z792.aspx
and python docs,
"The POSIX locale mechanism allows programmers to deal with certain cultural issues in an application, without requiring the programmer to know all the specifics of each country where the software is executed." https://docs.python.org/2/library/locale.html
My Windows7 is in English. But I'm living in Spain so... my locale is 'es_ES'.. not 'en_EN'
I don't know a cross-platform way, for linux you've got it. For windows I'll give you:
Another post talks about using win32 GetSystemDefaultUILanguage, Find out the language windows was installed as.
But if you want getting the windows language identifier, i recommend to use instead GetUserDefaultUILanguage(), because as stated en MSDN, will search recursively until reaches the language:
"Returns the language identifier for the user UI language for the current user. If the current user has not set a language, GetUserDefaultUILanguage returns the preferred language set for the system. If there is no preferred language set for the system, then the system default UI language (also known as "install language") is returned. For more information about the user UI language, see User Interface Language Management."
Code:
>>> import locale >>> locale.getdefaultlocale() ('es_ES', 'cp1252') # <------------- Bad! I'm on english OS. >>> import ctypes >>> windll = ctypes.windll.kernel32 >>> windll.GetUserDefaultUILanguage() 1033 >>> locale.windows_locale[ windll.GetUserDefaultUILanguage() ] 'en_US' # <----------- Good work 
3 Comments
Matteo Ferla
To summarise, as mentioned by OP,
os.environ['LANG'] works fine for Linux and Mac. While this solution works for Windows only (module 'ctypes' has no attribute 'windll' in Unix), an if os.name != 'posix' statement is required.
kakyo
On my Win10 , both methods give the same result.
gouravkr
There are two things in Windows at least, the display language for the OS, and the country or region, which is used to format dates, times, and numbers. So I can have a single language license where the Windows display language is en_US but regional format is en_IN. In my case, the locale module example above gives the locale (en_IN) while the ctypes example gives the OS display language (en_US). So I feel like it's not about it being reliable, but more about what you need to do with this info. If you want to format a date, then locale is better.
You could use the getdefaultlocale function in the locale module. It returns the language code and encoding of the system default locale in a tuple:
>>> import locale >>> locale.getdefaultlocale() ('en_GB', 'cp1252') 9 Comments
David Webb
@bank - Yes, I believe so. Works on Windows and the documentation describes how it works in POSIX environments so you should be fine.
Grisha S
Strangely it doesn't work for me. Always returns en_US, even on a German version of Windows
Kotauskas
THIS FUNCTION REFLECTS THE LOCALE OF YOUR CURRENT LOCATION
gaatjeniksaan
I have never touched my locale env vars (e.g.
LC_ALL). It is set to an empty string, so when running locale.getdefaultlocale() I get the underwhelming tuple: (None, 'UTF-8'). Be warned.
kubinka0505
Looks like its getting deprecated:
<stdin>:1: DeprecationWarning: Use setlocale(), getencoding() and getlocale() instead |
Better use windows command line...
import os current_locale = os.popen('systeminfo | findstr /B /C:"System Locale"').read() see https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/132175-see-current-system-locale-windows-10-a.html
1 Comment
e-info128
Only valid for windows, it's not a cross platform solution like as OSX.