System.Globalization
The global reach of the Internet, which essentially connects every intelligent box in the universe to every other intelligent box in the universe, means that essentially any application can be used by a native speaker of essentially any human language. Presenting numbers and dates in the manner that each user expects and immediately understands is not a matter of cultural sensitivity. It is a critical piece of communication necessary to avoid expensive errors. When you buy your non-refundable airline ticket online, does the departure date of 6–5–02 represent May 6 or June 5? The System.Globalization namespace in the .NET Framework contains classes that provide built-in functionality allowing a programmer to write programs that adjust to the language of its user, particularly in the area of formatting dates and numbers.
Significant portions of this namespace are covered in Volume 1 of the .NET Framework Standard Library Annotated Reference.
The class CultureInfo is provided for future standardization.
| 