Is it feasible to rely on setlocale, and rely on locales being installed?

Question

I was trying to generate a localized date string with strftime, the placeholder I use is %x. The language/locale is setlocale(LC_ALL, array(\

Answer 1

If my examination of setlocale() is correct, the answer is: No and no. The range of installed locales varies, as does their name, and the availability of a certain locale ultimately cannot be predicted with total certainty.

Answer 2

Feasible, yes. Wise, not at all!

Answer 3

You can check the return value of setlocale and at least check that it was installed. Otherwise you will have silent failures:

setlocale(LC_ALL, 'en_US') or die('Locale not installed');