[loc-en-dev] variant field casing

[Masayoshi Okutsu]

The API doc isn't clear at all, but the documentation gives some 
"impression" that the case is preserved for the variant argument. It's 
likely to encounter compatibility problems if we change the behavior.

Masayoshi

On 7/10/2009 3:26 AM, Yoshito Umaoka wrote:
> 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
>