NLS_LANG Settings in MS-DOS Mode and Batch Mode

NLS_LANG Settings in MS-DOS Mode and Batch Mode

When using Oracle utilities such as SQL*Plus, SQL Loader, Import, and Export in MS-DOS mode, the character set field of the NLS_LANG parameter for the session must first be set to the correct value.

This is required because MS-DOS mode uses, with a few exceptions, a different character set (or code-page), for example, OEM code-page, from Windows (ANSI code-page), and the default Oracle home NLS_LANG parameter in the registry is always set to the appropriate Windows code-page. If the NLS_LANG parameter for the MS-DOS mode session is not set appropriately, error messages and data can be corrupted due to incorrect character set conversion.

For Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese, the OEM code-page is identical to the ANSI code-page. In this case, there is no need to set the NLS_LANG in MS-DOS mode.

Similarly, in batch mode, set the correct character set value of the NLS_LANG by inserting a SET NLS_LANG command at the start of the batch procedure, according to the character set of the files to be processed in the procedure.

The following table lists the Oracle character sets that correspond to the OEM primary code-page in MS-DOS mode for each of the supported languages:

Language	Character Set
Arabic	AR8ASMO8X
Brazilian Portuguese	WE8PC850
Catalan	WE8PC850
Czech	EE8PC852
Danish	WE8PC850
Dutch	WE8PC850
English	US8PC437
Finnish	WE8PC850
French	WE8PC850
German	WE8PC850
Greek	EL8PC737
Hungarian	EE8PC852
Italian	WE8PC850
Japanese	JA16SJIS
Korean	KO16KSC5601
Latin American Spanish	WE8PC850
Norwegian	WE8PC850
Polish	EE8PC852
Portuguese	WE8PC850
Romanian	EE8PC852
Russian	RU8PC866
Simplified Chinese	ZHS16GBK
Slovak	EE8PC852
Slovenian	EE8PC852
Spanish	WE8PC850
Swedish	WE8PC850
Traditional Chinese	ZHT16BIG5
Turkish	TR8PC857