### DBCS and National Language Support

The Data Type and Exception Class Library provides double-byte character set (DBCS) support and national language support (NLS). You can use one source file for your application code and provide DBCS and NLS support by using separate resource files for the languages you support. The benefits of this organization include the following:

- The application is easy to maintain, because a single version of the application is used. This reduces the cost of maintaining your code.
- The application is easy to upgrade because only the source code is upgraded and then linked to the separate language files for different languages. This reduces the time and cost of upgrading your code because different language versions can be generated at the same time.

Because message strings are defined in either resource files or message catalogs, they can be translated easily to your local language without changes to the source code.

You should note the following when creating a DBCS-enabled application:

- String manipulation is DBCS-enabled. The string classes support mixed strings that contain both SBCS and DBCS characters. Use the string testing functions to determine if a character is single byte or double byte.
- The IDBCSBuffer class ensures that the search functions do not match the second or any subsequent bytes of a DBCS character and that the bytes of a DBCS character will not be split.

Overview of National Language Support
Double-Byte Character Set Support

Turning on Internationalization Semantics
Setting the Locale