Demand is steadily increasing in global markets for software products, and application developers are seeking to make their products available in multiple countries. While marketing their products globally, however, programmers must also make their applications function with the specific language and cultural conventions of the individual user's locale. With locale callable services, application developers can build programs that can be marketed globally, and still meet end users' needs to work with specific languages, cultures, and conventions.

Language Environment provides pre-defined locales, previously available to C/370™ routines only, that your PL/I routines and COBOL programs can access at run time through the locale callable services. You can also create your own locales, or modify the IBM-supplied locales, using the C locale definition utility available with the C/C++ compiler.

While C routines can use the locale callable services, it is recommended that they use the equivalent native C library services instead for portability across platforms.

For a complete description of Language Environment locale support, see z/OS Language Environment Programming Guide.