Software Internationalization Guide

The HP Internationalization Subsystem
Software Internationalization Guide—526225-002
4-11
Internationalization Functions and Guardian
Multibyte Character-Set Procedures
of a SORT or MERGE statement, and the CODE-SET clause of a file description entry
to provide control over behaviors similar to those provided through OSS locales.
The CURRENCY SIGN and DECIMAL POINT clauses of the SPECIAL-NAMES
paragraph allow formatting behaviors similar to those provided through OSS locales.
Date-Time Formats
COBOL date and time formats are not affected by locale. Data Division language
features provide the only format controls for both kinds of data.
Message Text
COBOL compiler and run-time diagnostic messages do not vary by locale.
Internationalization Functions and Guardian Multibyte
Character-Set Procedures
Guardian procedures can be called from OSS processes that also use OSS
internationalization functions. Such Guardian procedure calls are not locale-sensitive.
Guardian processes can use the set of Guardian procedure calls that have names
prefixed by MBCS_ to normalize multibyte character data for use with an application
written to support only ASCII data. See the Guardian Programmer’s Guide for an
overview of these multibyte character-set procedure calls and the Guardian Procedure
Calls Reference Manual for the specific actions supported.
HP recommends against mixing the Guardian multibyte character-set procedures and
the OSS internationalization functions in the same application.
Character Sets and Collating Sequences
The Guardian multibyte character-set procedures do not support all character sets
supported by OSS. All Guardian multibyte character sets use two bytes per character.
The Guardian multibyte character sets installed on a system can be determined by
calling the MBCS_CODESETS_SUPPORTED_ procedure. These sets include:
HP Kanji
IBM Kanji
IBM Kanji mixed
JEF (Fujitsu) Kanji
JEF (Fujitsu) Kanji mixed
NEC Kanjii
JIS Kanji
HP Hangul
Chinese Big 5
Chinese PC
HP KS C 5601-1987