Re: Currency Symbols

British Currency Pound Signs:

The British currency pound sign is not defined in the US7ASCII character set but is in many of the 8-bit character sets such as WE8ISO8859P1 and WE8DEC. In these character sets it is defined as mapping to ASCII value 163. To be able to see and manipulate the British currency pound sign, therefore, the database needs to be created with one of the 8-bit character sets (usually WE8ISO889P1 on Unix) and the environment variable, NLS_LANG, needs to be set to the 8-bit character set supported by your terminal. In this way the pound sign you input on the client side can be correctly translated to a pound sign in the database.

  To have the British pound sign as the default currency on the client side you
  also need to set the territory part of the NLS_LANG environment variable   (language_territory.character set) to United Kingdom. For example:

setenv NLS_LANG "AMERICAN_UNITED KINGDOM.WE8ISO8859P1" (the double quotes are because of the space between United and Kingdom).

NLS_LANG should be set:

      on Unix Clients - as an environment variable
      on 16 bit Windows Clients - in the "oracle.ini"
      on 32 bit Windows Clients - in the Windows registry

  Where Problems Occur:

  In many cases, customers have databases set up with the default character set
  and in a default environment but are still able to insert and retrieve British
  pound signs without problems. This is because character translation only occurs
  when the client and server character sets are different. With both set to   US7ASCII the NLS layer is bypassed therefore the values characters are mapped
  to are not translated. If the terminal displays British pound signs, then it
  will be mapping it to an ASCII value over 127, usually 163 and this is the   value which will be stored in the database.

  The problem occurs when any form of string processing is performed or any   tools, such as export, are used. When this happens, the character set is   checked and, as the 8th bit is not defined in US7ASCII, only 7 bits will be
  looked at. The 8th bit, which includes British pound signs, will be stripped
  out. The value displayed where a British pound sign should be will be #. If the
  database does have an 8 bit character set but the NLS_LANG is set to US7ASCII
  then the British pound sign is converted to a replacement character, '?', as
  there is no valid value to map it to.

  In the case of an export the British pound signs (or any other character   mapping to a value over 127) will not be in the export file so once the   original data has been destroyed it will be impossible to retrieve the   British pound signs. It is essential therefore to make sure that the database
  character set and the NLS_LANG character set are set correctly before an   export is performed.

John <jbraddon_at_bluecarrots.com> wrote in message news:3825668e_2_at_news1.vip.uk.com...
> My database reports currency in $ but i need it in £, I've tried messing
> around with nls parameters in the init.ora but to no avail as i don't
really
> know what i should be doing. Any help would greatly appreciated.
>
> John
>
>
>
>
Received on Sun Nov 07 1999 - 11:41:58 CST