National language support

The Language Environment message handler provides services to support many NLS machine readable information (MRI) requirements, such as: message formatting, message delivery, casing, folding, and normalization. The message facility formats messages for any national language known to Language Environment. Language Environment provides runtime messages for the following national languages:
  • ENU (Mixed-case English USA)
    • Message text is made up of SBCS characters and consists of both uppercase and lowercase letters.
    • Message inserts can contain DBCS characters.
    • Long messages are split at an SBCS blank if possible or split by the output line length if a blank separator does not exist.
  • UEN (Uppercase American English)

    This is identical to the mixed-case American English language except the message text consists of uppercase letters. Message inserts can be in lowercase or might use lowercase codepoints to make use of SBCS Katakana capabilities.

  • JPN (Japanese)
    This language supports devices that have both DBCS and SBCS capabilities; its characteristics are:
    • Message text can be made interchangeably of SBCS and DBCS characters.
    • If a long message extends beyond the print line and the text is SBCS, it is split at a blank when possible. If a blank separator does not exist, text is split by the output line length. If the text is DBCS, the message is split at a DBCS blank if possible. If a blank separator does not exist, it is split at the last DBCS character that allows a shift-in to be inserted. The next line begins with a shift-out character.

The national language can be set using the NATLANG runtime option or the CEE3LNG callable service. One current language is maintained at the enclave level and remains in effect until it is changed. For example, if JPN is specified in the NATLANG runtime option but ENU is later specified by the CEE3LNG callable service, ENU is considered the current national language. If the message text is not available for the current national language setting, the system-level or region-level default is used instead.

The current value of the COUNTRY runtime option controls the following values:
  • Date format
  • Time format
  • Currency symbol
  • Decimal separator character
  • Thousands separator

The value can be set by the COUNTRY runtime option or by the CEE3CTY callable service. The IBM-supplied default COUNTRY(US) indicates the default country is USA.

Parent topic: National language support and message handler