Globalization Support in the Directory, 5 of 7

Using Globalization Support with Command-Line Tools

The Oracle Internet Directory command-line tools read keyboard input or LDIF file input in the following ways:

ASCII characters only
Non-ASCII input (native language character set)
BASE64 encoded values of UTF-8 or native strings (from LDIF file only)

If the character set being given as input from an LDIF file or keyboard is not UTF-8, then the command-line tools need to convert the input into UTF-8 format before sending it to the LDAP server.

You enable the command-line tools to convert the input into UTF-8 by specifying the -E argument when using each tool.

This section contains these topics:

Specifying the -E Argument When Using Each Tool

The client tools always assume UTF-8 (the Oracle character set name is AL32UTF8) to be the character set unless otherwise specified by the -E argument. The BASE64-encoded values are decoded, and then the decoded buffer is converted to UTF-8 if the -E argument is specified. For example, if you specify -E ".ZHS16GBK", then the decoded buffer is converted from simplified Chinese to UTF-8 before being sent to the LDAP server.

Specifying the -E argument ensures that proper character set conversion can occur from the character set you specify for the -E argument (-E ".character_set") to the.UTF-8 character set.

The command-line tools use the -E argument to process the input in the character set specified for the -E argument. They display their output in the character set specified in the NLS_LANG environment variable.

For example, to add entries from an LDIF file encoded in the simplified Chinese character set (.ZHS16GBK) by using ldapadd, type:

ldapadd -h myhost -p 389 -E ".ZHS16GBK" -f my_ldif_file

In this example, the ldapadd tool converts the characters from ".ZHS16GBK" (simplified Chinese character set) to ".AL32UTF8" (UTF-8 character set) before they are sent across the wire to the LDAP server.

Examples: Using the -E Argument with Command-Line Tools

The following table provides additional examples of how to use the -E argument correctly for each command-line tool. In each example, the command converts data from simplified Chinese, as specified by the value ".ZHS16GBK", to UTF-8. For example, in each command, the values for the -D and -w options are in simplified Chinese. Specifying the -E argument converts them to UTF-8.

Note that, in the examples in the following table, we do not show any actual characters belonging to .ZHS16GBK character set. These examples would, therefore, work without the -E argument. However, if the argument values contained actual characters in the .ZHS16GBK character set, then we would need to use the -E argument.

See Also:
Appendix A, "Syntax for LDIF and Command-Line Tools" for syntax and usage notes for each of the command-line tools