Locales: Difference between revisions

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In software, a locale is a specification of language-, country-, and culture-specific ways of representing common kinds of information, specifically
In software, a locale specifies a choice of language-, country-, and culture-specific ways of representing common kinds of information, specifically


* time: 2:00 PM vs. 14:00
* time: 2:00 PM vs. 14:00
Line 5: Line 5:
* numbers: 1,000,000.1 vs. 1.000.000,1
* numbers: 1,000,000.1 vs. 1.000.000,1
* currency: $100 vs. USD100
* currency: $100 vs. USD100
* character set and encoding: extended ASCII vs. Unicode UTF-8
* measurements: US vs. SI (metric)

Locale names are commonly constructed from abbreviations for countries and languages, sometimes with character set appended. For example, en-us.utf8 specifies conventions appropriate to US English, with Unicode character set in UTF-8 encoding. The en-us locale differs on many but not all points from en-gb (Great Britain) or en-ca (Canada) and so on. All of these are significantly different from hi-in (Hindi in India) or zh-tw (Traditional Chinese in Taiwain).

Revision as of 01:15, 4 August 2006

In software, a locale specifies a choice of language-, country-, and culture-specific ways of representing common kinds of information, specifically

  • time: 2:00 PM vs. 14:00
  • dates: 3/2/2006 vs. 2006-3-2
  • numbers: 1,000,000.1 vs. 1.000.000,1
  • currency: $100 vs. USD100
  • character set and encoding: extended ASCII vs. Unicode UTF-8
  • measurements: US vs. SI (metric)

Locale names are commonly constructed from abbreviations for countries and languages, sometimes with character set appended. For example, en-us.utf8 specifies conventions appropriate to US English, with Unicode character set in UTF-8 encoding. The en-us locale differs on many but not all points from en-gb (Great Britain) or en-ca (Canada) and so on. All of these are significantly different from hi-in (Hindi in India) or zh-tw (Traditional Chinese in Taiwain).