These aren't the MONTHS you're looking for (aka You'll never get to the 13th month *that* way)

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2011/12/13 07:01 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2011/12/13/10247214.aspx

The other day I had somebody call me out about a blog I wrote a little over a year ago. I'll excerpt the mail to avoid some of the more graphic language:

Dude, maybe you should read a little before you freaking write! If you query for month names of the current user default when you Hebrew is the default and the Hebrew calendar is selected, then the only way to *avoid* getting Hebrew months is passing the flag to ignore user overrides. Kind of a huge hole in the "logic" of that blog you wrote!

For the record, I replaced the word he used with freaking there. He used 𝓕𝓾𝓬𝓴𝓲𝓷𝓰 only he didn't do something clever with Unicode to avoid the publish filters.

I was not offended, sometimes mail kind of goes that way.

But there are a few things you should probably know about me:

First of all, sometimes I can be wrong. There are two types of situations where that can happen:

• When it's something I don't care about. In that case, I'm simply not interested and you have an uphill battle trying to convince me it matters;
• When it's something I do Care about. In that case, I'll work to correct the problem, whatever it may be.

Now the fact that I don't care about the first category means the people who point those things out might not like me, but from my point of view I find them to be a waste of time, so that saves me a lot of time. And I can use that Free time to minimize the second category when possible!

Second of all, before you go down the road, you might want to try it yourself, and not trust what you might infer from the documentation.

I love our docs but I point out their real flaws all the time!

In this case, it is quite easy to change the Standards and Formats (aka default user locale) to Hebrew:

and then click the Additional settings... button and choose the Date tab to get to where you can change the calendar:

Once you do this, you'll see that we are now using the Hebrew calendar:

Now if while you are in this this situation, you call

GetLocaleInfo(LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT, LOCALE_SMONTHNAME13)

you will get a zero length string.

And if you call

GetLocaleInfo(LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT, LOCALE_SMONTHNAME12)

you will get

דצמבר

a.k.a December, not

כסלו

a.k.a. Kislev.

Well, not really Kislev, but you probbly know what I mean.

You see, to the random person who sent me the mail, I knew of this particular limitation. And before I wrote and published Note to the NLS API: It ain't ever gonna by 13 o'clock, either., I tested it out explicitly to make sure the issue was still there.

Because when it's stuff I find interesting, I know it makes a 𝓕𝓾𝓬𝓴𝓲𝓷𝓰 difference to get things right....

In the end, although GetLocaleInfo/GetLocaleInfoEx have documented behavior related to the LOCALE_NOUSEROVERRIDE flag, the fact is that the different month names inherent in many alternate calendars have never been returned, even when the LOCALE_ICALENDARTYPE has been changed and the functions can detect this fact.

Only the user overrides you can drectly change are impacted, and the "secondary" data like month names aren't available through GetLocaleInfo[Ex].

Is it a bug?

Sure, kinda.

But it is a bug that has existed for as long as alternate calendars have. In almost ever copy of Windiws ever sold or stolen.

This fact is easily verified experimentally by anyone who takes the the time to do so.

Ideally before cursing me in my own inbox, though if not I can always write a blog about it!

Doug Ewell on 13 Dec 2011 10:47 AM:

Michael S. Kaplan on 13 Dec 2011 11:46 AM:

Shachar Shemesh on 13 Dec 2011 12:11 PM:

Simon Buchan on 13 Dec 2011 1:45 PM:

Michael S. Kaplan on 13 Dec 2011 4:22 PM:

Alex Cohn on 14 Dec 2011 11:57 AM:

Brian Tkatch on 16 Dec 2011 5:21 AM:

Michael S. Kaplan on 16 Dec 2011 9:13 AM:

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