You might want to read MOS Doc ID 264157.1 - The correct NLS_LANG setting in Unix Environments. HTH, David > Jimmy, > > NLS_CHARACTERSET=US7ASCII means 256 characters see > http://www.asciitable.com/ > > > that's not 100% true. > only the first 127 char are defined. > That's what the 7 is standing for - ASCII 7-bit America > > Yes, you can trick the DB to store some 8-bit values. This will > bring you into a huge load of fun. > > sorry, > Martin > > > > Good catch! I don't why I typed 256 characters. Actually, it is 128 > characters - chr(0) to chr(127). > > I checked MOS and Oracle recommends using character set WE8MSWIN1252, > which is a superset of WE8ISO8859P1, P9, P15 and US7ASCII. > > -- > Jimmy Brock -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l