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How the MATLAB Process Uses Locale Settings

A locale is part of the user environment definition. It defines language, territory, and codeset, which is a coded character set. The MATLAB process uses the user-specified locale name on all platforms. MATLAB also reads the user-specified UI language name, and uses it to select localized resources in the specified language. By using this feature, a user can select localized resources in US-English. The user-specified UI language setting also controls language and country settings of the Sun™ Java Virtual Machine (JVM) software.

Consider the following when choosing your locale settings. To see what your current settings are, use the instructions in Setting Locale on Windows Platforms, Setting Locale on Linux and Solaris Platforms, or Setting Locale on Macintosh Platforms..

• Default Locale Setting — If the user-specified locale is not supported, MATLAB uses the default locale en_US.US-ASCII.

• UI Language Setting — The UI language setting should be set to either the same language as the user-specified locale or to US-English. Otherwise, non-7-bit ASCII characters might not display properly.

• Supported Encoding Scheme — MATLAB might not properly handle character codes greater than 2 bytes.

• Supported Character Set — MATLAB supports the character set specified by the user locale setting.

• M-File Compatibility — Non-7-Bit ASCII characters in M-files created on one platform might not be compatible on other platforms using different locale settings.

• Platform-Specific Localized Formats — MATLAB usually uses platform-neutral localized formats and rules.

• On Windows Platforms — User locale and system locale must be the same value on the Microsoft Windows platform. If these values are not the same, users might see garbled text or incorrect characters. For information on controlling these settings, see Setting Locale on Windows Platforms.

• On Macintosh Platforms — MATLAB automatically chooses a codeset for each combination of language and territory on the Apple Macintosh OS X platform. If you customize the locale setting on OS X, MATLAB ignores the customized portion. In Version 10.5 of the OS X operating system, MATLAB ignores the LANG environment variable.

• Running nodesktop Option On Macintosh OS X Version 10.5 Platforms — When you run MATLAB software with the -nodesktop startup option on the Macintosh OS X Version 10.5 platform, the MATLAB locale setting is not the Macintosh locale setting for the Terminal application. For example, for users selecting the Japanese_Japan region on the Formats tab, the MATLAB locale setting is ja_JP.sjis. The Macintosh locale setting is ja_JP.UTF-8.

Internationalization

Setting the Locale

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