locale

The set of information that corresponds to a given language and country. The code locale setting affects the language of terms such as keywords and defines locale-specific settings such as the decimal and list separators, date formats, and character sorting order.

The system locale setting affects the way locale-aware functionality behaves, for example, when you display numbers or convert strings to dates. You set the system locale using the Control Panel utilities provided by the operating system.

Although the code locale and system locale are generally set to the same setting, they may differ in some situations. For example, in Visual Basic, Standard Edition and Visual Basic, Professional Edition, the code is not translated from English-U.S. The system locale can be set to the user's language and country, but the code locale is always set to English-U.S. and can't be changed. In this case, the English-U.S. separators, format placeholders, and sorting order are used.