Question

In the USA and Europe the application folder is named Applications, but under Chinese or Japanese localization how is it named?

Is there a way to programmatically get the name of the folder?

Answer 1

The directory names in the filesystem are always in English. The directories can have localized names attached to them for displaying to the user, but those aren’t the names you use to access the directories. From Internationalization Programming Topics:

You need to be aware of localized path names in your application and display them appropriately. Localized path names are for display purposes only and should never be used when accessing the file system. You should continue to use the actual pathname when working with files and directories in your code, including when you need to write to caches or user preferences. The only time you should use a localized path name is when you want to display that path to the user through your application’s user interface.

That said, you get get the path programmatically using NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains:

NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSApplicationDirectory, NSLocalDomainMask, YES);
// Returns an NSArray containing the string "/Applications"

You can also use -[NSFileManager URLsForDirectory:inDomains:]:

NSArray *urls = [[NSFileManager defaultManager] URLsForDirectory:NSApplicationDirectory inDomains:NSLocalDomainMask];
// Returns an NSArray containing the NSURL "file://localhost/Applications"

If you need the localized names to display to the user, look at Internationalization Programming Topics.