Name: boT120536 Date: 04/12/2001


java version "1.3.0_02"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.3.0_02)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.3.0_02, mixed mode)

The number of digits used to display the year and the way the month is
displayed in the DateFormat.MEDIUM format changes with the Locale used, some
Locales show the year as '2001' others as '01' some display the month as '04'
others using abbriviation. This seems to be related to the problem described in
bug 4175300 where sun promises to change the MEDIUM format to use 4 digits for
year, it seems this is only true for some countries/languages.

The following code prints a list of MEDIUM formatted dates for every available
locale:

    Locale[] allLocales = Locale.getAvailableLocales();
    for (int i = 0; i < allLocales.length; i++) {
        SimpleDateFormat sdf
            = (SimpleDateFormat) DateFormat.getDateInstance(
                    DateFormat.MEDIUM, allLocales[i]);
        System.out.println(allLocales[i].getDisplayName()
             + " \t\t\t " + sdf.format(new Date()));
    }

Some of the output looks like this (cut to show some variations):

English Apr 12, 2001
English (United States) Apr 12, 2001
(..)
English (Canada) 12-Apr-01
(..)
Icelandic (Iceland) 12.4.2001
Chinese (Taiwan) 2001/4/12

This feature does not give me much trouble, but I feel very stupid telling my
users to change their language/country setting from Dutch/Netherlands to
English/US to display years in a y2k-save manner.
(Review ID: 120661)
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