Summary

The System.Globalization namespace contains classes that represent culture-specific information, such as character collation, number formatting, and date/time formatting. It allows applications to adapt their behavior and output to the conventions of different regions and languages.

Key types in this namespace enable:

• Culture Information: Representing and querying details about specific cultures (languages, regions, calendars, etc.) using the CultureInfo class.
• Text Encoding: Handling conversions between strings and byte arrays using various encodings, managed by the Encoding class and its descendants.
• Text Normalization: Performing operations like case conversion, accent removal, and canonical equivalence for strings with the TextInfo class.
• Calendar Systems: Working with different calendar systems (Gregorian, Japanese, Korean, etc.) through the Calendar abstract class and its concrete implementations.
• Region and Language Identification: Identifying and managing regions and languages for cultural settings.

Usage Examples

Here's a simple example demonstrating how to get culture-specific number formatting:

using System;
using System.Globalization;

public class GlobalizationExample
{
    public static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        double value = 12345.67;

        // Get formatting for the current culture
        CultureInfo currentCulture = CultureInfo.CurrentCulture;
        Console.WriteLine($"Current Culture: {currentCulture.DisplayName}");
        Console.WriteLine($"Formatted Number: {value.ToString("N2", currentCulture)}");

        // Get formatting for a specific culture (e.g., French)
        CultureInfo frenchCulture = new CultureInfo("fr-FR");
        Console.WriteLine($"French Culture: {frenchCulture.DisplayName}");
        Console.WriteLine($"Formatted Number: {value.ToString("N2", frenchCulture)}");

        // Get formatting for a specific culture (e.g., German)
        CultureInfo germanCulture = new CultureInfo("de-DE");
        Console.WriteLine($"German Culture: {germanCulture.DisplayName}");
        Console.WriteLine($"Formatted Number: {value.ToString("N2", germanCulture)}");
    }
}

Related Topics

• System.String
• System.DateTime
• System.Text.Encoding
• Globalization and Localization in .NET