DateFormatSymbols and non support Locales

Question

Hi
I am using the DateFormatSymbols class to get a list of the days of the week for various languages. As we know not all languages are currently supported by the JDK but I can supply additional languages using resource files.
What my code does is to first instantiate a new DateFormatSymbols for a given locale. If the Locale is not support i then catch the MissingResourceException (as stated in the javadoc) and load days of week from a resource file.
However this exception is never thrown and for unkown locales DateFormatSymbols just returns my OS default locale. Is this a known bug? or am i doing something wrong. Here's my code:
  String[] defaultDays;
  try
    DateFormatSymbols symbols = new DateFormatSymbols(new Locale("xx","xx"));
    defaultDays = symbols.getShortWeekdays();
  catch(MissingResourceException e)
  //unkown locale get weekdays from a resource file (hard coded for just now)
    defaultDays = new String[]{"s","m","t","w","t","f","s"};
  //display result
  for (int i = 0; i < defaultDays.length; i++) {
    System.out.print(defaultDays[i] + " ");
  }

Answer 1

As a guess that exception is probably only thrown if it can't find something that it 'knows' about. Thus if it couldn't find the default locale resource then it would throw it.
I suspect your only solution is going to be to keep a static list of what you are providing and use that first if that locale comes up.