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> ## Java Platform Localization Classes

> In the Java 2 platform, `java.util.Locale` represents a specific geographical, political, or cultural region. The string representation of a locale consists of the international standard two-character abbreviation for language and country and an optional variant, all separated by underscore (_) characters. Examples of locale strings include `fr` (French), `de_CH` (Swiss German), and `en_US_POSIX` (English on a POSIX-compliant platform).

> Locale-sensitive data is stored in a `java.util.ResourceBundle`. A resource bundle contains key-value pairs, where the keys uniquely identify a locale-specific object in the bundle. A resource bundle can be backed by a text file (properties resource bundle) or a class (list resource bundle) containing the pairs. You construct resource bundle instance by appending a locale string representation to a base name.

> For more details on internationalization and localization in the Java 2 platform, see

>     http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/i18n/index.html

> In the web technology chapters, the Duke's Bookstore applications contain resource bundles with the base name `messages.BookstoreMessages` for the locales `en_US`, `fr_FR`, `de_DE`, and `es_MX`.