During my tinkering with PS 5.1 related to the objective of question Fully change language for the current PowerShell session I observed a "strange" behavior:
> [system.threading.thread]::currentthread.currentculture ; [system.threading.thread]::currentthread.currentuiculture ;
LCID Name DisplayName
---- ---- -----------
1033 en-US English (United States)
1033 en-US English (United States)
> function Set-CultureWin([System.Globalization.CultureInfo] $culture) { [System.Threading.Thread]::CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = $culture ; [System.Threading.Thread]::CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = $culture } ; Set-CultureWin es-ES ; [system.threading.thread]::currentthread.currentculture ; [system.threading.thread]::currentthread.currentuiculture ;
LCID Name DisplayName
---- ---- -----------
3082 es-ES Español (España)
3082 es-ES Español (España)
> [system.threading.thread]::currentthread.currentculture ; [system.threading.thread]::currentthread.currentuiculture ;
LCID Name DisplayName
---- ---- -----------
1033 en-US English (United States)
1033 en-US English (United States)
(the function above was obtained from here).
Replacing [system.threading.thread]::currentthread.
with [cultureinfo]::
everywhere produced exactly the same results.
What I found strange is:
I conclude that the boundary of a "thread" (the currentthread) appears to be the execution command line.
Nevertheless, here it is quoted as "a session-scoped (non-persistent) solution" (in response to its OP Temporarily change powershell language to English?).
That answer even posted a wrapper function to limit the scope of the change to the executing command.
This information apparently opposes this, which states "[Threading.Thread]::CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture
only affects to current one-liner" (coinciding with my conclusion).
I can obtain an immediate change of Culture
for just that one "thread", even if Set-Culture
only takes effect after launching a new session.
I might conclude that's how it works.
How can these two points be rationalized? (I would welcome authoritative documentation).
Due to a bug in Windows PowerShell[1] (PowerShell [Core] v6+ is not affected), in-session changes to [cultureinfo]::CurrentUICulture
and [cultureinfo]::CurrentCulture
are automatically reset to the values at startup time[2] at the command prompt, whenever a command finishes executing.
Trying to modify the culture(s) in $PROFILE
is equally affected, unfortunately.
However, for a given script, in-script culture changes remain in effect for the entire script as well as its callees (on the main thread) - see this answer.
There are two possible workarounds:
Use reflection to modify the non-public field where Windows PowerShell stores the start-up culture value(s) - see this answer.
$PSUICulture
/ $PSCulture
will not reflect the culture put into effect by the workaround - use [cultureinfo]::CurrentCulture
/ [cultureinfo]::CurrentUICulture
instead.Alternatively, change the current user's OS-level language / locale settings before starting PowerShell:
Programmatically,
you can change the current user's display language (UI culture, reflected in [cultureinfo]::CurrentUICulture
) with Set-WinUILanguageOverride
you can change the locale (culture, reflected in [cultureinfo]::CurrentCulture
) with Set-Culture
Note that both commands require at least Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 R2 and that Set-WinUILanguageOverride
requires a logoff of reboot to take effect, while Set-Culture
changes only take effect in future sessions (but don't require a logoff / reboot).
[1] There is no official bug report I am aware of, but the following factors lead me to classify Windows PowerShell's behavior as a bug: The behavior is counterintuitive, cannot be avoided other than via a hack, and has been corrected in PowerShell [Core] v6+. Also, a core member of the PowerShell team had this to say in this GitHub issue: "I forget exact details, but the current culture is reset for reasons I never understood."
[2] The values at startup of the PowerShell process, as determined by the user's OS-level display language and locale settings (regional format).