[loc-en-dev] variant field casing

[Yoshito Umaoka]

Hi folks,

Variant field in Java Locale is case sensitive.  For example -

System.out.println(new Locale("th", "TH", "TH").equals(new Locale("th", 
"TH", "th")));
System.out.println(new Locale("th", "TH", "TH").equals(new Locale("th", 
"th", "TH")));

These statements print out the results -

false
true

I cannot see any descriptions about variant field casing in the API 
doc.  I think this behavior is problematic if we want to make Locale to 
handle language tags (which is case in-sensitive) properly.  I propose 
to document that all locale fields are case insensitive and change the 
behavior.  I know this is not backward compatible, but we probably 
should correct the behavior.

By the way, IANA language subtag registry uses lower case letters for 
variant subtags.  And the format used in the registry is the preferred 
casing.

-Yoshito