Setting sun.locale.formatasdefault to true in Java 7

Question

the following code will help illustrate my problem:

import java.util.Locale;
import java.text.*;

public class LocaleTest {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      System.out.println(Locale.getDefault());
      System.out.println("java-version-" +System.getProperty("java.version"));
      System.setProperty("sun.locale.formatasdefault","true");
      System.out.println("prop:" +System.getProperty("sun.locale.formatasdefault"));
      System.out.println("getLocale-" +Locale.getDefault());
   }
}

As we know, there is bug in Java 7, in Locale.getDefault().However as recommended by Oracle I have set the system property 'sun.locale.formatasdefault' to true. Even though I am now getting my m/c Locale, it is always showing as en_US even though my m/c Locale is set to fr_BE.

Here is the output of above code, which is compiled and run on Java 1.7.0_09:

en_US
java-version-1.7.0_09
prop:true
getLocale-en_US

Any thoughts on what might be causing thus? Many thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You need to set that system property before starting up your JVM. You can do this via command line arguments:

java -Dsun.locale.formatasdefault=true TargetClass

Or in environments where you don't control the launching of the JVM, you can set it via _JAVA_OPTIONS environment variable:

• *Nix

  export _JAVA_OPTIONS=-Dsun.locale.formatasdefault=true
  

• Windows

  SET _JAVA_OPTIONS=-Dsun.locale.formatasdefault=true
  

In Windows, if you want the change to be applied not only for that CMD but systemwide, you create a Windows System Variable JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS