Locale.UK and country code

java internationalization iso
Aravind Yarram picture Aravind Yarram · Dec 1, 2011 · Viewed 10k times · Source

According to the ISO 2 character codes uk = United Kingdom. But Locale.UK.getCountry() is returning GB. Am I missing something?

Answer

Pekka picture Pekka · Dec 1, 2011

According to this,

The getCountry() method returns the ISO 3166 two-letter abbreviation for the locale's region or country member.

The ISO 3166 two-letter abbreviation for the UK is indeed GB. uk is not part of the standard, but more of a historical accident:

The use of .uk rather than .gb for the top-level domain is due to its pre-existing use in the (now obsolete) JANET Name Registration Scheme in which the order of address components were reversed. .uk was made available in DNS to simplify the translation to and from these addresses. There were plans for eventual transition to .gb to accord with correct usage, but this never occurred; the use of .uk is now entrenched, and it is impossible to register a .gb domain.

Depending on your target use, you may need to replace .gb with .uk.

Related questions

How to use UTF-8 in resource properties with ResourceBundle

I need to use UTF-8 in my resource properties using Java's ResourceBundle. When I enter the text directly into the properties file, it displays as mojibake. My app runs on Google App Engine. Can anyone give me an example? I …

Read More
Android: how to get the current day of the week (Monday, etc...) in the user's language?

I want to know what the current day of the week is (Monday, Tuesday...) in the user's local language. For example, "Lundi" "Mardi" etc... if the user is French. I have read this post, it but it only returns an …

Read More
How to internationalize a Java web application?

I learnt from Google that Internationalization is the process by which I can make my web application to use all languages. I want to understand Unicode for the process of internationalization, so I learnt about Unicode from here and there. …

Read More