Using localized settings for streams

How writing or reading to and from streams is performed may depend on the language and regional settings. Examples include writing and parsing numbers, time values, or monetary values, or comparing (collating) strings. The C++ I/O library provides a general-purpose mechanism for handling internationalization features through locales and facets. In this recipe, you will learn how to use locales to control the behavior of input/output streams.

Getting ready

All of the examples in this recipe use the std::cout predefined console stream object. However, the same applies to all I/O stream objects. Also, in these recipe examples, we will use the following objects and lambda function:

auto now = std::chrono::system_clock::now();
auto stime = std::chrono::system_clock::to_time_t(now);
auto ltime = std::localtime(&stime);
std::vector<std::string> names
  {"John", "adele", "Øivind", "Franç...