HP Integrity NonStop J-Series - Manual (Page 238)

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©Copyright 1996 Rogue Wave Software
Challenges of Localizing Currencies, Numbers,
Dates, and Times
If you write applications for cultures other than your own, you will soon confront the challenges
of representing currencies, numbers, dates, and times. Currencies vary in both unit value and
notation. Numbers are written differently; for example, Europe and the United States use
periods and commas in opposite ways. Often a program must display values in notations
customary to both vendor and customer.
Scheduling, a common software function, involves time and calendar calculations. Local
versions of the Gregorian calendar use different names for days of the week and months, and
different ordering for the components of a date. Time may be represented according to a 12- or
24-hour clock, and further complicated by time zone conventions, like daylight-saving time
(DST), that vary from place to place, or even year to year.
The Standard C Library provides to accommodate some of these different formats,
but it is incomplete. It offers no help for conversion from strings to these types, and almost no
help for conversions involving two or more locales. Common time zone facilities, such as those
defined in POSIX.1 (see the Appendix), are similarly limited, usually offering no way to
compute wall clock time for other locations, or even for the following year in the same location.