Locale Helper

Define how years are counted and displayed for each era in a locale. The operand shall consist of semicolon-separated strings. Each string shall be an era description segment with the format: direction:offset:start_date:end_date:era_name:era_format according to the definitions below. There can be as many era description segments as are necessary to describe the different eras. NOTE: The start of an era might not be the earliest point in the era - it may be the AD 1, and increases with earlier time. direction Either a ’+’ or a ’-’ character. The ’+’ character shall indicate that years closer to the start_date have lower numbers than those closer to the end_date. The ’-’ character shall indicate that years closer to the start_date have higher numbers than those closer to the end_date. offset The number of the year closest to the start_date in the era, corresponding to the %Ey conversion specification start_date A date in the format YYYYMMDD, where YYYY, MM, and DD are the year, month, and day numbers respectively according to ISO 8601 of the start of the era. Years prior to AD 1 shall be represented as negative numbers. end_date The ending date of the era, in the same format as the start_date, or one of the two special values "-*" or "+*". The value "-*" shall indicate that the ending date is the beginning of time. The value "+*" shall indicate that the ending date is the end of time. era_name A string representing the name of the era, corresponding to the %EC conversion specification. era_format A string for formatting the year in the era, corresponding to the %EY conversion specification.