If COBOL for Windows cannot determine the value of an applicable locale category from the environment variables, it uses default settings.
The default locale is set to en_US.ibm-1252.
When the language and country codes are determined from environment variables, but the code page is not, COBOL for Windows uses the Windows OEM code page from the Windows regional settings. The code page and the language and country-code combination must be compatible.
Windows APIs: The COBOL run time does not change the Windows Regional Options settings or the process locale that are used by native Windows APIs.
related tasks
Specifying the code page with a locale
Using environment variables to specify a locale
Accessing the active locale and code-page values
Setting environment variables
related references
Locales and code pages that are supported
Runtime environment variables