ICU

ICU is an open-source set of libraries that enables consistent behavior across platforms and languages, making it essential for internationalization (i18n) and localization (l10n) tasks.

It ensures that text, dates, numbers, and other culturally sensitive content are processed and displayed according to locale-specific rules.

Originally developed by IBM and now maintained by the Unicode Consortium, ICU is widely used in enterprise and open-source applications. Its integration with the Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) allows it to stay up to date with locale-specific conventions, supporting accurate formatting, sorting, and parsing across hundreds of languages and regions.

The ICU libraries are especially valuable in modern localization platforms and global software development, where linguistic precision and regional accuracy directly impact user experience. They are widely portable and gives applications the same results on all platforms and between C/C++ and Java software.

🛠️ What can ICU do? #️⃣

• Provides robust code page conversion between Unicode and legacy encodings
• Enables language-sensitive string comparison with locale-specific collation rules
• Formats numbers, dates, and currency according to regional conventions
• Implements Unicode-aware regular expressions for global text processing
• Handles bidirectional text (e.g., combining Arabic with English) accurately
• Offers full access to Unicode properties and normalization functions
• Supports multiple calendar systems and time zone calculations
• Detects text boundaries for words, sentences, and line breaks
• Integrates with the CLDR for up-to-date localization data

📚 You can read more about ICU in their official docs.