Culture

In computer terms culture refers to how things like numbers, dates and currencies are formatted – among other things. It can have a big impact on how things look on screen or how they can be input. PowerShell V2 has introduced a whole raft of features to "internationalise" the input and output. Before looking at that in a future post we will look at what we can discover about the current culture on our machines.

I run Windows Vista and as I live in England I use English (United Kingdom) for my language settings.

This refers to CTP 2

PowerShell has 2 automatic (i.e. built in) variables related to culture

PS> $PSCulture
en-GB
PS> $PSUICulture
en-US

Note that $PSCulture returns en-GB (UK English) but $PSUICulture returns en-US (USA English)

$PSCulture = name of the culture currently in use within the OS and determines display format for numbers, currency and dates etc

$PsUICulture = UI Culture in use in the OS and determines which text strings are user for user interface elements such as menus and messages

PS> get-date "12/31/2008"
Get-Date : Cannot bind parameter ‘Date’. Cannot convert value "12/31/2008" to type "System.DateTime". Error: "String was not recognized as a valid DateTime."
At line:1 char:9
+ get-date <<<< "12/31/2008"
PS> get-date "31/12/2008"

31 December 2008 00:00:00

Shows that UK rather than US date formats are in use – which matches with the culture information

Note that culture settings cannot be changed with PowerShell.

More information can be found using a couple of cmdlets.

PS> Get-Culture | Format-List

Parent                         : en
LCID                           : 2057
KeyboardLayoutId               : 2057
Name                           : en-GB
IetfLanguageTag                : en-GB
DisplayName                    : English (United Kingdom)
NativeName                     : English (United Kingdom)
EnglishName                    : English (United Kingdom)
TwoLetterISOLanguageName       : en
ThreeLetterISOLanguageName     : eng
ThreeLetterWindowsLanguageName : ENG
CompareInfo                    : CompareInfo – 2057
TextInfo                       : TextInfo – 2057
IsNeutralCulture               : False
CultureTypes                   : SpecificCultures, InstalledWin32Cultures, FrameworkCultures
NumberFormat                   : System.Globalization.NumberFormatInfo
DateTimeFormat                 : System.Globalization.DateTimeFormatInfo
Calendar                       : System.Globalization.GregorianCalendar
OptionalCalendars              : {System.Globalization.GregorianCalendar, System.Globalization.GregorianCalendar}
UseUserOverride                : True
IsReadOnly                     : False

PS> Get-UICulture | Format-List

Parent                         : en
LCID                           : 1033
KeyboardLayoutId               : 1033
Name                           : en-US
IetfLanguageTag                : en-US
DisplayName                    : English (United States)
NativeName                     : English (United States)
EnglishName                    : English (United States)
TwoLetterISOLanguageName       : en
ThreeLetterISOLanguageName     : eng
ThreeLetterWindowsLanguageName : ENU
CompareInfo                    : CompareInfo – 1033
TextInfo                       : TextInfo – 1033
IsNeutralCulture               : False
CultureTypes                   : SpecificCultures, InstalledWin32Cultures, FrameworkCultures
NumberFormat                   : System.Globalization.NumberFormatInfo
DateTimeFormat                 : System.Globalization.DateTimeFormatInfo
Calendar                       : System.Globalization.GregorianCalendar
OptionalCalendars              : {System.Globalization.GregorianCalendar, System.Globalization.GregorianCalendar}
UseUserOverride                : True
IsReadOnly                     : False