The catopen function opens the message catalog identified by name. If name contains a colon (:), a square opening bracket ([), or an angle bracket (<), or is defined as a logical name, then it is assumed that name is the complete file specification of the catalog. If it does not include these characters, catopen assumes that name is a logical name pointing to an existing catalog file. If name is not a logical name, then the logical name NLSPATH is used to define the file specification of the message catalog. NLSPATH is defined in the user's process. If the NLSPATH logical name is not defined, or no message catalog can be opened in any of the components specified by the NLSPATH, then the SYS$NLSPATH logical name is used to search for a message catalog file. Both NLSPATH and SYS$NLSPATH are comma-separated lists of templates. The catopen function uses each template to construct a file specification. For example, NLSPATH could be defined as: DEFINE NLSPATH SYS$SYSROOT:[SYS$I18N.MSG]%N.CAT,SYS$COMMON:[SYSMSG]%N.CAT In this example, catopen first searches the directory SYS$SYSROOT:[SYS$I18N.MSG] for the named catalog. If the named catalog is not found there, the directory SYS$COMMON:[SYSMSG] is searched. The catalog name is constructed by substituting %N with the name passed to catopen, and adding the .cat suffix. %N is known as a substitution field. The following substitution fields are valid: Field Meaning %N Substitute the name passed to catopen %L Substitute the locale name. The period (.) and at-sign (@) characters in the locale name are replaced by an underscore (_) character. For example, the "zh_CN.dechanzi@radical" locale name results in a substitution of ZH_CN_DECHANZI_RADICAL. %l Substitute the language part of the locale name. For example, the language part of the en_GB.ISO8859-1 locale name is en. %t Substitute the territory part of the locale name. For example, the territory part of the en_GB.ISO8859-1 locale is GB. %c Substitute the codeset name from the locale name. For example, the codeset name of the en_GB.ISO8859-1 locale name is ISO8859-1. If the oflag argument is set to NL_CAT_LOCALE, then the current locale as defined for the LC_MESSAGES category is used to determine the substitution for the %L, %l, %t, and %c substitution fields. If the oflag argument is set to 0, then the value of the LANG environment variable is used as a locale name to determine the substitution for these fields. Note that using NL_CAT_LOCALE conforms to the XPG4 specification while a value of 0 (zero) exists for the purpose of preserving XPG3 compatibility. Note also, that catopen uses the value of the LANG environment variable without checking whether the program's locale can be set using this value. That is, catopen does not check whether this value can serve as a valid locale argument in the setlocale call. If the substitution value is not defined, an empty string is substituted. A leading comma or two adjacent commas (,,) is equivalent to specifying %N. For example, DEFINE NLSPATH ",%N.CAT,SYS$COMMON:[SYSMSG.%L]%N.CAT" In this example, catopen searches in the following locations in the order shown: 1. name (in the current directory) 2. name.cat (in the current directory) 3. SYS$COMMON:[SYSMSG.locale_name]name.cat