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locale

Is it safe to use Locale as a way to store "Country" and "Language"

Wikipedia says that locale dictates a set of formatting rules for a specific language/region combination so it doesn't contain timezone or daylight savings information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locale

This leads me to believe that it would be a bad practice to derive the country and language elements independently and make use of them for other purposes like sorting data by a specific country.

Is it safe to say that locale doesn't map to a specific geographic location and therefore shouldn't be used to associate data to a geographic location?

Solution

  • It is safe to say that locale is not connected to location, yes.

    For example, a Japanese businessman in San Diego would be using his laptop set to a Japanese locale.

    Likewise, a US businessman visiting China would be using a US locale.