Creating International Perl Scripts

Internationalization, sometimes called I18N, is the process of generalizing a script or program so that it can be easily moved or translated into a different language or dialect. Localization, L10N, is the process of taking the internationalized version of a script and making it work in a specific language. Some internationalization can be done in core Perl—extracting all the text strings that a script uses, for example, to allow those to be translated without mucking with the core code. Other things—working with character sets other than English's A to Z, using sorting (collating) systems other than simple A to Z, and formatting numbers—can be controlled through the use of Perl's local module.

For more information on using and managing Perl locales to create internationalized (or localized) scripts, see the perllocale man page.