Cultural environment considerations

DFSORT's collating behavior can be modified according to your cultural environment. Your cultural environment is defined to DFSORT using the X/Open** locale model. A locale is a collection of data grouped into categories that describes the information about your cultural environment.

The collate category of a locale is a collection of sequence declarations that defines the relative order between collating elements (single character and multi-character collating elements). The sequence declarations define the collating rules.

The cultural environment is established by selecting the active locale. The active locale affects the behavior of locale-sensitive functions. In particular, the active locale's collating rules affect DFSORT's SORT, MERGE, INCLUDE, and OMIT processing as follows:

Sort and Merge
DFSORT produces sorted or merged records for output according to the collating rules defined in the active locale. This provides sorting and merging for single- or multi-byte character data based on defined collating rules that retain the cultural and local characteristics of a language.
Include and Omit
DFSORT includes or omits records for output according to the collating rules defined in the active locale. This provides inclusion or omission for single- or multi-byte character data based on defined collating rules that retain the cultural and local characteristics of a language.
Note: Locale processing is not used for IFTRAIL TRLID or IFTHEN WHEN, BEGIN or END constants or compare fields.

The DFSORT option LOCALE specifies whether locale processing is to be used and, if so, designates the active locale. Only one locale can be active at a time for any DFSORT application.