Localization is one of the important topics in TYPO3. TYPO3 is being used all over the world and users prefer to see it in their own language. The same applies to extensions. This section covers issues related to localization.
Different countries use different formats for numbers and dates. While TYPO3 includes configuration parameters for date and time, it is better to make such parameters configurable in an extension. It is preferable to use sprintf() for formatting numbers. Formatting dates is more complex because there are two choices: the date() and the strftime() functions. Localization-aware plugins should use the strftime() function because it has much better localization support than the date() function. In particular, it can show months and days according to the current language and locale.