Oracle7 Server Reference Manual

Additional NLS Environment Variables

SQL commands such as ALTER SESSION SET NLS...=... can be issued to alter the NLS settings for the current session. In addition, Oracle7 Server release 7.3 supports the following NLS parameters as environment variables to provide greater flexibility for multi-lingual applications:

NLS_DATE_FORMAT

NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE

NLS_SORT

NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS

NLS_CURRENCY

NLS_ISO_CURRENCY

NLS_CALENDAR

These variables work in a similar fashion to NLS_LANG. The syntax for the environments listed above is the same as that for the ALTER SESSION command.

The following is an example for a UNIX environment:

setenv NLS_DATE_FORMAT "dd/mon/yy"

For more information, see the Oracle7 Server Administrator's Guide.

Client-Only Environment Variables

The following environment variables can be set in the client environment:

NLS_CREDIT

NLS_DEBIT

NLS_DISPLAY

NLS_LANG

NLS_LIST_SEPARATOR

NLS_MONETARY_CHARACTERS

NLS_CREDIT

Default value:	derived from NLS_TERRITORY
Range of values:	any string, maximum of 9 bytes (not including null)

NLS_CREDIT sets the symbol that displays a credit in financial reports. The default value of this parameter is determined by NLS_TERRITORY.

NLS_DEBIT

Default value:	derived from NLS_TERRITORY
Range of values:	any string, maximum of 9 bytes (not including null)

NLS_DEBIT sets the symbol that displays a debit in financial reports. The default value of this parameter is determined by NLS_TERRITORY.

NLS_DISPLAY

Default value:	none
Range of values:	any valid string

NLS_DISPLAY sets the client-side display environment. It is only applicable to Hebrew and Arabic languages. For a list of valid character sets, see

Value is a string of the form locale_direction.characterset, where locale is any string up to 20 bytes (not including null) containing only the characters [A-Z, a-z, 0-9 -], direction is either RTL or LTR (case- insensitive), and characterset specifies a valid display character set.

Specification of locale and direction is optional. If omitted, locale will default to an empty string, and direction will default to LTR. The characterset option must be specified. If you specify direction or characterset, you must include the preceding delimeter [underscore ( _ ) for direction, period ( . ) for characterset], otherwise the value will be parsed as a language name.

NLS_LIST_SEPARATOR

Default value:	derived from NLS_TERRITORY
Range of values:	any valid character

Defines the character to use to separate values in a list of values.

The character specified must be single-byte and cannot be the same as either the numeric or monetary decimal character, any numeric character, or any of the following characters: plus (+), hyphen (-), less than sign (<), greater than sign (>), period (.).

NLS_MONETARY_CHARACTERS

Default value:

derived from NLS_TERRITORY

Defines the characters that indicate monetary units, such as the dollar sign ($) for U.S. Dollars, and the cent symbol (¢) for cents.

The two characters specified must be single-byte and cannot be the same as each other. They also cannot be any numeric character or any of the following characters: plus (+), hyphen (-), less than sign (<), greater than sign (>).