Diagnostic 912: could not set locale

Cause:

This error occurs only when the LANG environment variable is set to an invalid locale. The compiler makes a call to setlocale() and if it fails then it issues this error.  For example:

$ export LANG=NULL
$ icc -c -V hello.cpp
Intel(R) C Intel(R) 64 Compiler Professional for applications running on Intel(R) 64, Version 11.0    Build 20090131 Package ID: l_cproc_p_11.0.081
Copyright (C) 1985-2009 Intel Corporation.  All rights reserved.

Catastrophic error: could not set locale "" to allow processing of multibyte characters

compilation aborted for hello.cpp (code 4)

Resolution:

To work around this error set "LANG" to a valid locale like "LANG=C" or "LANG=en_US.UTF-8".  Some systems may require that you set "LC_ALL=en_US" in addition to setting LANG.

$ export LANG=C
$ icc -c -V hello.cpp
Intel(R) C Intel(R) 64 Compiler Professional for applications running on Intel(R) 64, Version 11.0    Build 20090131 Package ID: l_cproc_p_11.0.081
Copyright (C) 1985-2009 Intel Corporation.  All rights reserved.

$ export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
$ export |grep LANG
declare -x LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
$ icc -c -V hello.cpp
Intel(R) C Intel(R) 64 Compiler Professional for applications running on Intel(R) 64, Version 11.0    Build 20090131 Package ID: l_cproc_p_11.0.081
Copyright (C) 1985-2009 Intel Corporation.  All rights reserved.
$

For more complete information about compiler optimizations, see our Optimization Notice.

Comments (7)

January 21, 2009 4:28 AM PST Manuel

I've seen that this error may be eliminated setting the environment variable LANG to C (export LANG=C in bash). The problem is that with previous versions this wasn't needed. I'm working with Ubuntu 2.6.24-23-generic #1 x86_64 SMP Intel Core 2 Duo T8100.

February 24, 2009 9:21 AM PST Frank

I got the same error while compiling openmpi-1.3 with version 11.0.081 of the Intel Compiler Suite on Debian Lenny (2.6.26-1-amd64 #1 SMP x86_64 on Intel Xeon E5420). I have to set LANG to C instead of en_US.UTF-8 to get it working. Thanks Manuel!

May 6, 2009 3:28 AM PDT nicola

in my system do export LANG=en_US.UTF-8 export LC_ALL=en_US an then it works

July 3, 2009 1:38 PM PDT Sebastien

I try every combination possible of C/en_US for LANG and LC_ALL without success on Intel(R) C Intel(R) 64 Compiler Professional for applications running on Intel(R) 64, Version 11.1 Build 20090511 with ubuntu 8.10 and custom built 2.6.28.10

July 3, 2009 1:51 PM PDT Sebastien

for me I needed to set LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 for it to work because LC_ALL=en_US did not work

July 8, 2009 8:04 PM PDT Akio Yasu (Intel) Total Points: 355 Registered User

I think this issue is more likely affected by LC_CTYPE rather than LANG setting. In my system Ubuntu 8.04, even if LANG=NULL, it worked under LC_CTYPE=C or en_US.UTF-8, whatever values shown by "locale -a".

December 7, 2009 5:03 AM PST Igor

Thank you very much! I received this problem when I passed to Ubuntu 9.10 from 9.04. Your article helped me to desolve it. I used LANG=C

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