Why not all countries are presented in CultureInfo.GetCultures()?

Question

I am using this standard code for populating list of countries:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    List cultureList = new List();

    CultureInfo[] cultures = CultureInfo.GetCultures(CultureTypes.AllCultures & ~CultureTypes.NeutralCultures);

    foreach (CultureInfo culture in cultures)
    {
        try
        {
            RegionInfo region = new RegionInfo(culture.LCID);

            if (!(cultureList.Contains(region.EnglishName)))
            {
                cultureList.Add(region.EnglishName);
                Console.WriteLine(region.EnglishName);
            }
        }
        catch (ArgumentException ex) 
        {
            // just ignor this
            continue;
        }
    }
}

I saw that some countries are missed. Just wondered what's the reason of such situation?

Answer 1

You are not getting all cultures:

CultureTypes.AllCultures & ~CultureTypes.NeutralCultures

Answer 2

I would use CultureTypes.SpecificCultures but it does not answer your question.

Why there is only subset of world's countries? Well, there are so many of them. Somebody would have to maintain them and it does cost money. I think that's why Microsoft decided to support only the most "popular" ones.

BTW. You may create your own CultureInfo. Also, I haven't tried, but you can create RegionInfo instance by passing its ISO code in constructor. I am not sure what will happen if there is no matching CultureInfo, though.