Java Reference
In-Depth Information
24.1. Locale
A
java.util.Locale
object describes a specific placecultural, political, or
geographical. Using a locale, objects can
localize
their behavior to a
user's expectations. An object that does so is called
locale-sensitive.
For
example, date formatting can be localized by using the locale-sensitive
DateFormat
class (described later in this chapter), so the date written in
the United Kingdom as
26/11/72
would be written
26.11.72
in Iceland,
11/
26/72
in the United States, or
72.26.11
in Latvia.
A single locale represents issues of language, country, and other tradi-
tions. There can be separate locales for U.S. English, U.K. English, Aus-
tralian English, Pakistani English, and so forth. Although the language is
arguably in common for these locales, the customs of date, currency, and
numeric representation vary.
Your code will rarely get or create
Locale
objects directly but instead will
use the default locale that reflects the user's preference. You typically use
this locale implicitly by getting resources or resource bundles as shown
with other locale-sensitive classes. For example, you get the default cal-
endar object like this:
Calendar now = Calendar.getInstance();
The
Calendar
class's
getInstance
method looks up the default locale to con-
figure the calendar object it returns. When you write your own locale-
sensitive classes, you get the default locale from the static
getdefault
method of the
Locale
class.
If you write code that lets a user select a locale, you may need to create
Locale
objects. There are three constructors:
public
Locale(String language, String country, String variant)
