### Overview of National Language Support

VisualAge for C++ provides national language support using the XPG/4 programming model, and using the locale-sensitive functions of the C runtime library.

When you enable NLS, member functions of the IString, IDate, ITime, and ITimeStamp classes become locale sensitive, in both SBCS and DBCS environment. The classes provide the following capabilities:

IString
  Character string handling in SBCS and DBCS environments
IDate
  Date formatting and manipulation functions
ITime
  Time formatting and manipulation functions
ITimeStamp
  Date and time formatting and manipulation functions

While the interfaces of these classes do not change when you enable NLS, the underlying semantics change to reflect locale requirements. For example, the compare family of IString functions no longer perform bitwise comparisons, but instead perform comparisons based on the string collation sequence defined by the current locale.

Double-Byte Character Set Support

Turning on Internationalization Semantics
Setting the Locale