You can use national literals or data items of USAGE NATIONAL in a relation condition with any relational operator. The PROGRAM COLLATING SEQUENCE clause has no effect on comparisons that involve national operands.
Use the NCOLLSEQ(LOCALE) compiler option to effect comparisons based on the algorithm for collation order that is associated with the active locale at run time. If NCOLLSEQ(BINARY) is in effect, the collating sequence is determined by the binary values of the national characters.
Keys used in a SORT or MERGE statement can be class national only if the NCOLLSEQ(BIN) option is in effect.
related tasks
Comparing national (UTF-16) data
Controlling the collating sequence with a locale
Controlling the DBCS collating sequence with a locale
Setting sort or merge criteria
related references
NCOLLSEQ
Classes and categories of data
(COBOL for Windows Language Reference)
National comparisons
(COBOL for Windows Language Reference)