Get consistent response from to_char 'D' using different NLS's

Pericles

Hello

I'm using to_char(date,'D') in a package procedure to get the day of the week of a given date. If something happens on weekend (to_char(date,'D') is 1 or 7 ) the procedure should do A else B.

I'm facing some issues because the procedure will be called from an APEX 22.1 session affected by user's NLS. If the user's NLS is EN-US to_char('23-JUL-2022','D') returns 7, but if the user NLS is SP-AR then the same function returns 6, affecting the result of the procedure

I've found that DBMS_SESSION.SET_NLS can be used, but I'm quite worried about what would be the impact of that change for the end user.

Wonder if there is another way to find out if a date is Saturday or Sunday no mater NLS format.

Appreciate your comments.

Frank Kulash

You could also tell TO_CHAR explicitly to use a particular language, like this:

TO_CHAR (dt, 'Dy', 'NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE=ENGLISH') IN ('Sat', 'Sun')

regardless of what the system or session NLS settings are. However, you can't tell TO_CHAR to use a particular NLS_TERRITORY, which is what governs the 'D' format.

Frank Kulash

Hi, @Pericles

If dt is a DATE, then

 dt- TRUNC (dt, IW') >= 5

will be true if (and only if) dt is a Saturday or Sunday, regardless or any NLS settings.

Frank Kulash

You could also tell TO_CHAR explicitly to use a particular language, like this:

TO_CHAR (dt, 'Dy', 'NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE=ENGLISH') IN ('Sat', 'Sun')

regardless of what the system or session NLS settings are. However, you can't tell TO_CHAR to use a particular NLS_TERRITORY, which is what governs the 'D' format.

Pericles

Thank you so much Frank.

Appreciate your comment.