ahoy all.
while finding a few answers related to determining the locale's decimal separator (AKA radix point, thousands separator) in a shell script, the only answers that i have found related to obtaining the currency symbol of the current locale are specific to a programming language (e.g. PHP, Java, etc). however surprisingly i cannot yet find a solution which can be used in a POSIX shell script. i have come across references to locale variables like LC_MONETARY and LC_CURRENCY but have not yet stumbled upon a way to access them from the shell as they are not in the default environment of a normal bash/dash login.
as always thanks for reading and for any answers and comments.
peace.
after some more spelunking in the locale command i have discovered the following method for getting the currency symbol of the current locale:
locale currency_symbol
this command and keyword returns the appropriate currency symbol of the current locale
$ LANG=it_IT.UTF-8 locale currency_symbol
€
$ LANG=en_US.UTF-8 locale currency_symbol
$
of course any other solutions and options, including ones that avoid the execution of an external command (i.e. locale) and a sub-process, are always appreciated :)