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 e.g. .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

The problem with above solution is that it has to be done on the linux shell. 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.

Solution that worked for me is

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