I'm looking for a list of all locales and their short codes for a PHP application I am writing. Is there much variation in this data between platforms?
Also, if I am developing an international application, can I just support one version of English or are there significant differences in English across the world?
The importance of locales is that your environment/os can provide formatting functionality for all installed locales even if you don't know about them when you write your application. My Windows 7 system has 211 locales installed (listed below), so you wouldn't likely write any custom code or translation specific to this many locales.
The most important thing for various versions of English is in formatting numbers and dates. Other differences are significant to the extent that you want and able to cater to specific variations.
af-ZA
am-ET
ar-AE
ar-BH
ar-DZ
ar-EG
ar-IQ
ar-JO
ar-KW
ar-LB
ar-LY
ar-MA
arn-CL
ar-OM
ar-QA
ar-SA
ar-SY
ar-TN
ar-YE
as-IN
az-Cyrl-AZ
az-Latn-AZ
ba-RU
be-BY
bg-BG
bn-BD
bn-IN
bo-CN
br-FR
bs-Cyrl-BA
bs-Latn-BA
ca-ES
co-FR
cs-CZ
cy-GB
da-DK
de-AT
de-CH
de-DE
de-LI
de-LU
dsb-DE
dv-MV
el-GR
en-029
en-AU
en-BZ
en-CA
en-GB
en-IE
en-IN
en-JM
en-MY
en-NZ
en-PH
en-SG
en-TT
en-US
en-ZA
en-ZW
es-AR
es-BO
es-CL
es-CO
es-CR
es-DO
es-EC
es-ES
es-GT
es-HN
es-MX
es-NI
es-PA
es-PE
es-PR
es-PY
es-SV
es-US
es-UY
es-VE
et-EE
eu-ES
fa-IR
fi-FI
fil-PH
fo-FO
fr-BE
fr-CA
fr-CH
fr-FR
fr-LU
fr-MC
fy-NL
ga-IE
gd-GB
gl-ES
gsw-FR
gu-IN
ha-Latn-NG
he-IL
hi-IN
hr-BA
hr-HR
hsb-DE
hu-HU
hy-AM
id-ID
ig-NG
ii-CN
is-IS
it-CH
it-IT
iu-Cans-CA
iu-Latn-CA
ja-JP
ka-GE
kk-KZ
kl-GL
km-KH
kn-IN
kok-IN
ko-KR
ky-KG
lb-LU
lo-LA
lt-LT
lv-LV
mi-NZ
mk-MK
ml-IN
mn-MN
mn-Mong-CN
moh-CA
mr-IN
ms-BN
ms-MY
mt-MT
nb-NO
ne-NP
nl-BE
nl-NL
nn-NO
nso-ZA
oc-FR
or-IN
pa-IN
pl-PL
prs-AF
ps-AF
pt-BR
pt-PT
qut-GT
quz-BO
quz-EC
quz-PE
rm-CH
ro-RO
ru-RU
rw-RW
sah-RU
sa-IN
se-FI
se-NO
se-SE
si-LK
sk-SK
sl-SI
sma-NO
sma-SE
smj-NO
smj-SE
smn-FI
sms-FI
sq-AL
sr-Cyrl-BA
sr-Cyrl-CS
sr-Cyrl-ME
sr-Cyrl-RS
sr-Latn-BA
sr-Latn-CS
sr-Latn-ME
sr-Latn-RS
sv-FI
sv-SE
sw-KE
syr-SY
ta-IN
te-IN
tg-Cyrl-TJ
th-TH
tk-TM
tn-ZA
tr-TR
tt-RU
tzm-Latn-DZ
ug-CN
uk-UA
ur-PK
uz-Cyrl-UZ
uz-Latn-UZ
vi-VN
wo-SN
xh-ZA
yo-NG
zh-CN
zh-HK
zh-MO
zh-SG
zh-TW
zu-ZA