Locales

A locale is a collection of language-related, user-preference information represented as a list of values. Each system has at least one installed locale and often has many locales from which the user may choose.

The system assigns a locale to each thread. Initially, the system assigns the system default locale to the thread. This default locale is set by the user when the system is installed or through Regional Options in Control Panel. If a thread is run in a process belonging to a user, the system assigns the user-default locale to the thread. An application can override either default by using the SetThreadLocale function to explicitly set the locale for a thread.