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.TH locale.alias 5 "January 2002" "Debian GNU/Linux"
.SH "NAME"
locale.alias \- Locale name alias data base
.SH "DESCRIPTION"
The locale.alias database file (/etc/locale.alias) is used by the
.B locale
command and the 
.B X Window System
. 
It describes aliases for the locales, with each line being of the
form 
 
<alias> <localename>

Where <localename> is in the POSIX format: xx_YY.CHARSET.
The first two letters \fIxx\fR are the ISO-639 Language code,
 the next two \fIYY\fR are the ISO-3166 Country code, 
and the Charset is one of the  character sets (listed in 
\fI/usr/share/i18n/charsets\fR
).
The aliases can be free text; they are normally the English language
name, or simpler versions of the POSIX locale name. 

Lines beginning with Hash ("#") are treated as comments and ignored.

.SH "SEE ALSO"
locale(1), localedef(1), locale-gen(8),  locale.gen(5) 
.SH "AUTHOR"
Alastair McKinstry <mckinstry@computer.org>