MS DOS Command: COUNTRY

Reference from Microsoft MS-DOS cmd help

Description

Enables MS-DOS to use country-specific conventions for displaying times, dates, and currency; for determining the order by which characters are sorted; and for determing which characters can be used in filenames. You can use this command only in your CONFIG.SYS file.

The COUNTRY command configures MS-DOS to recognize the character set and punctuation conventions observed when using one of the supported languages.

Syntax

COUNTRY=xxx[,[yyy][,[drive:][path]filename]]

Parameters

xxx	Specifies the country code.
yyy	Specifies the character set for the country.
[drive:][path]filename	Specifies the location and name of the file containing country information.

Related Commands

For information about changing characters and their arrangement on your keyboard, see the KEYB command, or see the chapter "Customizing for International Use" in the MS-DOS User's Guide.

For information about preparing and selecting character sets, see the MODE (set device code pages) command.

For information about loading country-specific information, see the NLSFUNC command.

Remarks

Changing default settings

MS-DOS uses the United States as the default setting. You can use the COUNTRY command in your CONFIG.SYS file to change the setting.

If you do not specify the location and name of the file containing country-specific information, MS-DOS tries to find the COUNTRY.SYS file in the root directory of your startup drive.

Specifying supported languages

The following table lists each country or language supported by MS-DOS. The table also lists the character sets you can use with each country code. For example, if you use country code 003, you can use only character set 437 or 850 for the yyy parameter. The first of the two character sets listed for each country or language is its default character set.

Country or language	Country code	Character sets
Belgium	032	850, 437
Brazil	055	850, 437
Canadian-French	002	863, 850
Croatia	038	852, 850
Czech Republic	042	852, 850
Denmark	045	850, 865
Finland	358	850, 437
France	033	850, 437
Germany	049	850, 437
Hungary	036	852, 850
International English	061	437, 850
Italy	039	850, 437
Latin America	003	850, 437
Netherlands	031	850, 437
Norway	047	850, 865
Poland	048	852, 850
Portugal	351	850, 860
Serbia/Yugoslavia	038	852, 850
Slovakia	042	852, 850
Slovenia	038	852, 850
Spain	034	850, 437
Sweden	046	437, 850
Switzerland	041	850, 437
United Kingdom	044	437, 850
United States	001	437, 850

Character sets for the following countries or languages are also available with special versions of MS-DOS: Arabic, Israel, Japan, Korea, People's Republic of China, and Taiwan.

Specifying international time and date formats

The country code specifies the time and date formats used by the following MS-DOS commands: BACKUP, DATE, RESTORE, and TIME.

The following table lists the date and time formats related to each country code. For each country code, the "Date format" column shows how MS-DOS displays January 3, 1993, and the "Time format" column shows how MS-DOS displays 5:35 P.M. (with 0 seconds and 0 hundredths of a second).

Country or language	Country code	Date format	Time format
Belgium	032	23/01/1993	17:35:00
Brazil	055	23/01/1993	17:35:00
Canadian-French	002	1993-01-23	17:35:00
Czechoslovakia	042	1993-01-23	17:35:00
Denmark	045	23-01-1993	17.35.00
Finland	358	23.01.1993	17.35.00
France	033	23.01.1993	17:35:00
Germany	049	23.01.1993	17:35:00
Hungary	036	1993-01-23	17:35:00
International English	061	23-01-1993	5:35:00.00p
Italy	039	23/01/1993	17.35.00
Latin America	003	23/01/1993	5:35:00.00p
Netherlands	031	23-01-1993	17:35:00
Norway	047	23.01.1993	17:35:00
Poland	048	1993-01-23	17:35:00
Portugal	351	23-01-1993	17:35:00
Spain	034	23/01/1993	17:35:00
Sweden	046	1993-01-23	17.35.00
Switzerland	041	23.01.1993	17,35,00
United Kingdom	044	23/01/1993	17:35:00.00
United States	001	01-23-1993	5:35:00.00p
Yugoslavia	038	1993-01-23	17:35:00

Character sets for the following countries or languages are also available with special versions of MS-DOS: Arabic, Israel, Japan, Korea, People's Republic of China, and Taiwan.

Examples

To convert international currency, time, date, and case to French conventions, add the following command to your CONFIG.SYS file:

country=033

For this example, assume that the COUNTRY.SYS file is in the root directory of the startup drive. If COUNTRY.SYS is in a different location, you would specify the location in [drive:]path on the command line.

To specify a character set with the country code for France, type the following:

country=033,850

If you omit the character set but include the [drive:][path] filename parameter, you must still type the comma that would have preceded the character set, as the following example shows:

country=033,,c:\dos\country.sys

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