Set the language for a single program execution.

Question

Complete C++ i18n gettext() “hello world” example. sets the LANG environment variable using export before executing the program (Linux):

export LANG=es_MX.utf8
./hellogt

Is there a way to set the language just while executing hellogt, like a command line argument? This would be handy for testing programs.

Answer 1

You mean something like:

LANG=es_MX.utf8 ./hellogt

? Or maybe you mean you want to parse the commandline (argv), find the language passed in, and pass it to setlocale?

Answer 2

In ksh, bash, and similar shells,

LANG=es_MX.utf8 ./hellogt

will set LANG=es_MX.utf8 only for the invocation of ./hellogt.

More portably, there is a program called env

env LANG=es_MX.utf8 ./hellogt

which will set environment variables and run the program specified. This works in all shells, including csh and traditional sh (which do not support the first method).