How to get systeminfo locale - Locale.getDefault()

Question

Currently my System Locale is en-UK, it used to be en-US (I've restarted my computer for this change to be in effect)

When I print Locale.getDefault().getCountry().toString() I still get US though.

In the API it states:

getDefault()

Gets the current value of the default locale for this instance of the Java Virtual Machine.

Maybe the JVM locale is not related to the system locale? If so, how do I get the system locale on Windows?

Edits:

• after researching the other questions about this, I found it useful to say that I'm dealing with Java 6.
• I've just found that on my OS (Windows 7) the System locale change is not reflected in Java, but the Control Panel > Region and Language > Formats change is reflected.
• I've overlooked something, in production code the osgi.nl config attribute is set, changing what Locale.getDefault would return otherwise

Answer 1

I realized in production an argument WAS being set that altered the Locale.getDefault() return value. This was difficult to check/prove.

My solution was that the user.country and user.language were not changed and reflected the actual Locale.

Locale locale = new Locale(System.getProperty("user.language"),System.getProperty("user.country"));
Locale.setDefault(locale);
//this will do the trick for me

Big thanks to everyone who answered and commented.

Answer 2

There was is bug in Sun JDK 6u27+ and JDK 7, BugId 7073906:

The Locale returned from Locale.getDefault() is en_US when it shoud be en_GB.

I think this is what is biting you here :)

Answer 3

The country variant is taken from the "Non-Unicode" settings in the extended dialog of Windows locale.

Answer 4

Your JVM locale and System locale can indeed possibly be different. When the JVM is first loaded it assigns its locale to be the same as the system's locale unless you specified otherwise on the command line (not all implementations let you do this). You can see what the value of this JVM locale is from Locale.getDefault().

In case you want to change that you can: Locale.setDefault("<preferred_locale>") read more about it here.

The system locale setting depends on the OS that you are using. I don't know much about Windows but, you can see what the values are from System.getEnv(). It returns a Map<String, String> of all environment properties and you can look for something like LANG or GDM_LANG, etc.