Handling Errors in Locale Operations

There are three types of locales in ILE COBOL:
  • DEFAULT locale
  • CURRENT locale
  • Specific locales.
Specific locales are referenced in the SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph and in the SET LOCALE statement. An example of a specific locale in the SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph is: 
 SPECIAL-NAMES.  LOCALE "MYLOCALE" IN LIBRARY "MYLIB" IS newlocale.
DATA DIVISION.
WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
01 group-item.
   05  num-edit PIC $99.99 SIZE 8 LOCALE newlocale.
PROCEDURE DIVISION.
    MOVE 40 to num-edit.

In the above example a specific locale mnemonic-name newlocale has been defined. This mnemonic-name is used in the definition of variable num-edit. Since the mnemonic-name is referenced in the program, the first time the above program is called, the ILE COBOL runtime tries to find the locale MYLOCALE in library MYLIB and load it into memory.

A locale on the IBM® i is an object of type *LOCALE, and like other IBM i objects exists within a library and has a specific authority assigned to it. Any locale mnemonic-name that is defined and referenced in the COBOL program will be resolved the first time the program is called. The possible types of failures include:
  • Locale does not exist in the specified library
  • Library for locale does not exist
  • Not enough authority to the locale or locale library.

These types of failures are typical of most other IBM i objects. In any of the above scenarios an escape message (usually LNR7096) is issued. Once a locale object is located it must be loaded by the ILE COBOL run-time. Loading a locale object requires the allocation of various spaces, if space is not available an escape message is issued (usually LNR7070).

The SET LOCALE has several possible forms, the two basic forms that can reference a specific locale are: 
 SPECIAL-NAMES.  LOCALE "ALOCALE" IS alocale.
 DATA DIVISION.
 WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
 O1 group-item.
    05 num-edit PIC +$9(4).99 SIZE 10 LOCALE alocale.
* num-edit2 is based on the current locale
    05 num-edit2 PIC +$9(4).99 SIZE 10 LOCALE.
    05 locale-name PIC X(10) VALUE "FRANCE".
    05 locale-lib  PIC X(10) VALUE "MYLIB".
    MOVE 345.67 TO num-edit.
* set the current locale to "ALOCALE" in library "*LIBL".
    SET LOCALE LC_ALL FROM alocale.
    MOVE 678.02 TO num-edit2.

* set the current locale to "FRANCE" in library "MYLIB".
    SET LOCALE LC_ALL FROM locale-name
        IN LIBRARY locale-lib.
    MOVE 678.02 TO num-edit2.

The first form references a locale mnemonic-name in the SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph, and just like in the previous example is resolved and loaded the first time the program is called. In the second SET statement, the locale name is taken from the contents of identifier locale-name and the library where the locale exists is taken from the contents of identifier locale-lib. In this case the resolve and load of the locale object is done when the SET statement is run. With this form of the SET statement if the locale can not be resolved an escape message (usually LNR7098) is issued. It is issued for the same type of reasons as LNR7096 mentioned previously.