### Locale Source Files

Locales are defined through the specification of a locale definition file. The locale definition contains one or more distinct locale category source definitions and not more than one definition of any category. Each category controls specific aspects of the cultural environment. A category source definition is either the explicit definition of a category or the `copy` directive, which indicates that the category definition should be copied from another locale definition file.

The definition file is composed of an optional definition section for the escape and comment characters to be used, followed by the category source definitions. If the locale source file does not contain a source definition for a category, a default definition is used.

Locale definition files passed to the LOCALDEF utility are assumed to be in coded character set IBM-850. Individual characters, characters in strings, and collating elements should be represented by symbolic names defined in the `charmap` file. The locale definition language includes rules for character representation.

Comments
Comment lines and blank lines can appear anywhere in the locale definition file. If the escape and comment characters are not defined, default code points are used (x5C for the escape character and x23 for the comment character, respectively).

Continuation Lines
You can continue a line in a locale definition file by placing an escape character as the last character on the line. This continuation character is discarded from the input. Even though there is no limitation on the length of each line, for portability reasons it is suggested that each line be no longer than 2048 characters (bytes). There is no limit on the accumulated length of a continued line. You cannot continue comment lines on a subsequent line by using an escaped <newline>.

The Definition Section
The definition section consists of the following optional lines:

>     escape_char     <character>
>     comment_char    <character>

where <character> in both cases is a single-byte character to be used, for example:

>     escape_char     /

defines the escape character in this file to be `'/'` (the <slash> character).

Internationalization
Localization and Locales

Customize a Locale

Locale Categories