Geoprocessing in different locales and regions

ArcGIS Pro can be used in different locales, and geoprocessing tools honor your operating system's user locale. In other words, when ArcGIS Pro launches, geoprocessing tools will run according to this user locale setting. This will be demonstrated in the following scenarios:

Support for locales will be demonstrated in the following scenarios:

  • Use of geoprocessing tools in ArcGIS Pro
  • Use of ArcPy in ArcGIS Pro
  • Use of ArcPy outside of ArcGIS Pro

To demonstrate, you will use a German operating system with German(Germany) set as the user locale, compared with an English operating system with English(United States) set as the user locale.

German(Germany) user locale

English(United States) user locale

Geoprocessing tool dialog

In your example, you will use the Buffer tool and provide a linear unit for the tool's Distance parameter.

When using an operating system with German(Germany) as the user locale, you can enter 4,5, as a comma is used as the decimal separator in Germany.

Buffer tool in a German environment

If you were to enter 4.5 with a decimal separator, the value will be updated to 4,5 to comply with the user locale region setting.

When using an operating system with English (United States) as the user locale, 4.5 is specified on the dialog box, as a period is used as the decimal separator in the United States.

Buffer tool in an English environment

Python in ArcGIS Pro

The behavior observed in the tool dialog, is also observed in the Python window or in ArcGIS Notebooks in ArcGIS Pro. The Python locale is set according to the user locale.

Python window's locale in a German environment

Buffer tool in Python window in German environment

Using arcpy outside of ArcGIS Pro

When using geoprocessing tools in Python outside of ArcGIS Pro, the locale in Python will be set to the current user locale after importing arcpy. Note, that in Python, the default locale is English, so that locale.getlocale() will return (None, None) before the arcpy module is imported. Thus, working in the Python with arcpy modules and functions will have the same behavior as working in ArcGIS Pro.

Python command prompt in German OS