month and day date ordering in date format

FROM : Ben Dougall
DATE : Tue Dec 28 18:55:08 2004

on my machine in international system prefs, for both long and short
date, the day number is set to come before the month. (the date setting
is 'custom'. it was first set to 'uk' then the separator character was
changed).

but
[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] objectForKey:NSDateTimeOrdering]
returns:
MDYH
the month is before the day. it's the same in jaguar and panther. what
is NSDateTimeOrdering's order based on?

thanks, ben.