GLS8BITFSYS environment variable

Use the GLS8BITFSYS environment variable to tell HCL OneDB™ products (such as the HCL OneDB ESQL/C processor) whether the operating system is 8-bit clean.

This setting determines whether the HCL® OneDB product can use non-ASCII characters in the file name of an operating-system file that it generates.
GLS8BITFSYS { 0 | 1 }
Element
Description
0
HCL OneDB products assume that the operating system is not 8-bit clean and generate file names with 7-bit ASCII characters only.
1
HCL OneDB products assume that the operating system is 8-bit clean and can use non-ASCII characters (8-bit or multibyte characters) in the file name of an operating-system file that it generates.

If you include non-ASCII characters in a file name that you specify within a client application, you must ensure that the code set of the server-processing locale supports these non-ASCII characters. If you do not set GLS8BITFSYS, HCL OneDB database servers behave as if GLS8BITFSYS is set to 1.

For example, create a database that is called A1A2B1B2, where A1A2 and B1B2 are multibyte characters, with the following SQL statement:
CREATE DATABASE A1A2B1B2

If GLS8BITFSYS is 1 (or is not set) on the server computer, the database server assumes that the operating system is 8-bit clean, and it generates a database directory, A1A2B1B2.dbs.

If GLS8BITFSYS is set to 0 on the server computer and you include non-ASCII characters in the file name, the HCL OneDB product uses an internal algorithm to convert these non-ASCII characters to ASCII characters. The file names that result are 7-bit clean.

File names with invalid byte sequences generate errors when they are used with GLS-based products.

Only some database utilities, such as dbexport, and the compilers for HCL OneDB ESQL/C products use GLS8BITFSYS on the client computer to create and use files. For example, suppose you compile the HCL OneDB ESQL/C source file that is called A1A2B1B2.ec, where A1A2 and B1B2 are multibyte characters. If GLS8BITFSYS is set to 1 (or is not set) on the client computer, the HCL OneDB ESQL/C processor generates an intermediate C file that is called A1A2B1B2.c. For a list of HCL OneDB ESQL/C files that check GLS8BITFSYS, see Handle non-ASCII characters.