Java™ Platform
Standard Ed. 6

Package java.text

Provides classes and interfaces for handling text, dates, numbers, and messages in a manner independent of natural languages.

See:
          Description

Interface Summary
AttributedCharacterIterator An AttributedCharacterIterator allows iteration through both text and related attribute information.
CharacterIterator This interface defines a protocol for bidirectional iteration over text.
 

Class Summary
Annotation An Annotation object is used as a wrapper for a text attribute value if the attribute has annotation characteristics.
AttributedCharacterIterator.Attribute Defines attribute keys that are used to identify text attributes.
AttributedString An AttributedString holds text and related attribute information.
Bidi This class implements the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm.
BreakIterator The BreakIterator class implements methods for finding the location of boundaries in text.
ChoiceFormat A ChoiceFormat allows you to attach a format to a range of numbers.
CollationElementIterator The CollationElementIterator class is used as an iterator to walk through each character of an international string.
CollationKey A CollationKey represents a String under the rules of a specific Collator object.
Collator The Collator class performs locale-sensitive String comparison.
DateFormat DateFormat is an abstract class for date/time formatting subclasses which formats and parses dates or time in a language-independent manner.
DateFormat.Field Defines constants that are used as attribute keys in the AttributedCharacterIterator returned from DateFormat.formatToCharacterIterator and as field identifiers in FieldPosition.
DateFormatSymbols DateFormatSymbols is a public class for encapsulating localizable date-time formatting data, such as the names of the months, the names of the days of the week, and the time zone data.
DecimalFormat DecimalFormat is a concrete subclass of NumberFormat that formats decimal numbers.
DecimalFormatSymbols This class represents the set of symbols (such as the decimal separator, the grouping separator, and so on) needed by DecimalFormat to format numbers.
FieldPosition FieldPosition is a simple class used by Format and its subclasses to identify fields in formatted output.
Format Format is an abstract base class for formatting locale-sensitive information such as dates, messages, and numbers.
Format.Field Defines constants that are used as attribute keys in the AttributedCharacterIterator returned from Format.formatToCharacterIterator and as field identifiers in FieldPosition.
MessageFormat MessageFormat provides a means to produce concatenated messages in a language-neutral way.
MessageFormat.Field Defines constants that are used as attribute keys in the AttributedCharacterIterator returned from MessageFormat.formatToCharacterIterator.
Normalizer This class provides the method normalize which transforms Unicode text into an equivalent composed or decomposed form, allowing for easier sorting and searching of text.
NumberFormat NumberFormat is the abstract base class for all number formats.
NumberFormat.Field Defines constants that are used as attribute keys in the AttributedCharacterIterator returned from NumberFormat.formatToCharacterIterator and as field identifiers in FieldPosition.
ParsePosition ParsePosition is a simple class used by Format and its subclasses to keep track of the current position during parsing.
RuleBasedCollator The RuleBasedCollator class is a concrete subclass of Collator that provides a simple, data-driven, table collator.
SimpleDateFormat SimpleDateFormat is a concrete class for formatting and parsing dates in a locale-sensitive manner.
StringCharacterIterator StringCharacterIterator implements the CharacterIterater protocol for a String.
 

Enum Summary
Normalizer.Form This enum provides constants of the four Unicode normalization forms that are described in Unicode Standard Annex #15 — Unicode Normalization Forms and two methods to access them.
 

Exception Summary
ParseException Signals that an error has been reached unexpectedly while parsing.
 

Package java.text Description

Provides classes and interfaces for handling text, dates, numbers, and messages in a manner independent of natural languages. This means your main application or applet can be written to be language-independent, and it can rely upon separate, dynamically-linked localized resources. This allows the flexibility of adding localizations for new localizations at any time.

These classes are capable of formatting dates, numbers, and messages, parsing; searching and sorting strings; and iterating over characters, words, sentences, and line breaks. This package contains three main groups of classes and interfaces:

Since:
JDK1.1

Java™ Platform
Standard Ed. 6

Submit a bug or feature
For further API reference and developer documentation, see Java SE Developer Documentation. That documentation contains more detailed, developer-targeted descriptions, with conceptual overviews, definitions of terms, workarounds, and working code examples.

Copyright 2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Use is subject to license terms. Also see the documentation redistribution policy.