RegionInfo class

This article provides supplementary remarks to the reference documentation for this API.

Unlike the CultureInfo class, the RegionInfo class does not represent user preferences and does not depend on the user's language or culture.

Names associated with a RegionInfo object

The name of a RegionInfo object is one of the two-letter codes defined in ISO 3166 for country/region. Case is not significant. The Name, TwoLetterISORegionName, and ThreeLetterISORegionName properties return the appropriate codes in uppercase. For the current list of RegionInfo names, see ISO 3166: Country codes.

Instantiate a RegionInfo object

To instantiate a RegionInfo object, you pass the RegionInfo(String) constructor either a two-letter region name, such as "US" for the United States, or the name of a specific culture, such as "en-US" for English (United States). However, we recommend that you use a specific culture name instead of a two-letter region name, because a RegionInfo object is not completely language-independent. Several RegionInfo properties, including DisplayName, NativeName, and CurrencyNativeName, depend on culture names.

The following example illustrates the difference in RegionInfo property values for three objects that represent Belgium. The first is instantiated from a region name (BE) only, while the second and third are instantiated from culture names (fr-BE for French (Belgium) and nl-BE for Dutch (Belgium), respectively). The example uses reflection to retrieve the property values of each RegionInfo object.

using System;
using System.Globalization;
using System.Reflection;

public class Example
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        // Instantiate three Belgian RegionInfo objects.
        RegionInfo BE = new RegionInfo("BE");
        RegionInfo frBE = new RegionInfo("fr-BE");
        RegionInfo nlBE = new RegionInfo("nl-BE");

        RegionInfo[] regions = { BE, frBE, nlBE };
        PropertyInfo[] props = typeof(RegionInfo).GetProperties(BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public);

        Console.WriteLine("{0,-30}{1,18}{2,18}{3,18}\n",
                          "RegionInfo Property", "BE", "fr-BE", "nl-BE");
        foreach (var prop in props)
        {
            Console.Write("{0,-30}", prop.Name);
            foreach (var region in regions)
                Console.Write("{0,18}", prop.GetValue(region, null));

            Console.WriteLine();
        }
    }
}
// The example displays the following output:
//    RegionInfo Property                           BE             fr-BE             nl-BE
//
//    Name                                          BE             fr-BE             nl-BE
//    EnglishName                              Belgium           Belgium           Belgium
//    DisplayName                              Belgium           Belgium           Belgium
//    NativeName                                België          Belgique            België
//    TwoLetterISORegionName                        BE                BE                BE
//    ThreeLetterISORegionName                     BEL               BEL               BEL
//    ThreeLetterWindowsRegionName                 BEL               BEL               BEL
//    IsMetric                                    True              True              True
//    GeoId                                         21                21                21
//    CurrencyEnglishName                         Euro              Euro              Euro
//    CurrencyNativeName                          euro              euro              euro
//    CurrencySymbol                                 €                 €                 €
//    ISOCurrencySymbol                            EUR               EUR               EUR

In scenarios such as the following, use culture names instead of country/region names when you instantiate a RegionInfo object:

• When the language name is of primary importance. For example, for the es-US culture name, you'll probably want your application to display "Estados Unidos" instead of "United States". Using the country/region name (US) alone yields "United States" regardless of the language, so you should work with the culture name instead.

• When script differences must be considered. For example, the country/region AZ deals with Azerbaijani cultures that have the names az-Latn-AZ and az-Cyrl-AZ, and the Latin and Cyrillic scripts can be very different for this country/region.

• When maintenance of detail is important. The values returned by RegionInfo members can differ depending on whether the RegionInfo object was instantiated by using a culture name or a region name. For example, the following table lists the differences in return values when a RegionInfo object is instantiated by using the "US" region, the "en-US" culture, and the "es-US" culture.

  Member	"US"	"en-US"	"es-US"
  CurrencyNativeName	US Dollar	US Dollar	Dólar de EE.UU.
  Name	US	en-US	es-US
  NativeName	United States	United States	Estados Unidos
  ToString	US	en-US	es-US