Locale : Java Glossary

by Roedy Green ©1996-2009 Canadian Mind Products
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Locale

a geographic or political region that shares the same language and customs. Programs can be customised to a language, country and style. Locales have been given standard identifiers, e.g. Locale.CANADA, Locale. CANADA_FRENCH, Locale. FRANCE and Locale.US. These are not the same as country codes. There are four main ways to get a java.util.Locale:

java.text.NumberFormat uses the current locale by default. You can create a locale specific formatter with:

import java.text.Numberformat;
//...
NumberFormat nf = NumberFormat.getNumberInstance( someLocale );

You can use that NumberFormat both for input (parsing) and output (formatting):

java.text.DecimalFormatSymbols lets you get and set the individual characters such as getDecimalSeparator() and getGroupingSeparator(). You can translate Strings, Audioclips and Images used by your programs and pack them into java.util.ResourceBundles.

You can set the Locale three different ways:

use the "-Duser.country=us" "-Duser.language=en" options to set the system properties on the java.exe command line.
Use Locale.setDefault.
Set the locale in the Windows Control Panel.

Gotchas

Locale.setDefault ( Locale.ITALY) will not have any effect on SimpleDateFormat objects already created. You need to set the default Locale before creating your SimpleDateFormat objects or use the SimpleDateFormat constructor that takes a Locale.

Learning More

Sun’s tutorial on Localisation

Sun’s Javadoc on the Locale class : available:

on the web at java.sun.com
in the current JDK 1.6.0_14 or in the old JDK 1.5.0_19 on your local Windows J: drive.

Sun’s Javadoc on the NumberFormat class : available:

on the web at java.sun.com
in the current JDK 1.6.0_14 or in the old JDK 1.5.0_19 on your local Windows J: drive.

country codes
language codes
localisation
ResourceBundle
translation

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