Oracle 8i - Pound Symbols (£) stored as hashes (#)

Good Morning,

I'm investigating a call on a system I don't usually work on. It's an Oracle 8.1.7.0.0 backend, with a Forms 6.0.8.18 client. There's been a complaint that on a report, pound symbols are displayed as hashes. I've had a look, and it seems that the problem runs a bit deeper than that.

The db column that's storing these symbols is defined as LONG, and stores user-input text strings, that are to be printed on the report. If I update one of the rows of this column manually, e.g. via SQL*Plus, to include a pound symbol, when it is selected back, it appears as a hash. A quick select of the Oracle instance environment settings reveals the following for the regional values:

NLS_CURRENCY=$
NLS_TERRITORY=AMERICA
NLS_CALENDAR=GREGORIAN
NLS_DATE_FORMAT=DD-MON-YY
NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE=AMERICAN

Could the NLS_TERRITORY setting be responsible for this behaviour? The database is hosted and used in the UK, so there's no compelling reason for the settings to be defaulted to US values.

Any help or guidance would be appreciated. You can be technical, I'm a PLS programmer, but don't have much experience configuring the Oracle backend.

Thanks

Sam Jones

PS, Here's a short worked example illustrating the problem:

SQL> select * from special_instructions where si_an_version_id = 142958;

SI_AN_VERSION_ID SI_AN_ID SI_SPECIAL_INSTRUCTIONS

---------------- ---------- ------------------------------------------------


------------------------

          142958          0     Ron
                                        Please call asap and make an
appointment.
                                        Thanks
                                        Christina

SQL> update special_instructions
  2 set si_special_instructions = 'Ron
  3 Please call asap and make an appointment.   4 Thanks
  5 Christina £££'
  6 where si_an_version_id = 142958;

1 row updated.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

SQL> select * from special_instructions where si_an_version_id = 142958;

SI_AN_VERSION_ID SI_AN_ID SI_SPECIAL_INSTRUCTIONS

---------------- ---------- ------------------------------------------------


------------------------

          142958          0        Ron
                                           Please call asap and make an
appointment.
                                            Thanks
                                            Christina ###