There are many AIX facilities which are represented differently in various cultures. Language (of the man pages, of command status output, ...), how numbers are represented, keyboard layout and many other things. All this is controlled by some environment variables of which "LANG" is one (and probably the most important). Issue the "set" command and you will see "LANG", but probably also "LC_MESSAGES" and a few others.

It is possible to control this "language environment" for every process separately, simply by setting the language variable to a different value upon process start, like this:

Code:

# (export LANG=<some_value> ; command)

Now for the role of "/etc/environment": as you have issued "set" you sure have noticed there are a lot of variables assigned. Most of these variables are not set explicitly by you, but get assigned default values. These system-wide default values are stored in "/etc/environment". Have a look at it, it is a simple text file with declarations in the form

Code:

# comment line
variable=value

Every time you log in your environment initially gets filled with these defaults. After this your own changes to the environment are being applied and you can change and override any of these defaults. You certainly have a special user for the program you are talking about. If you depend on the LANG variable to have a certain value it is a wise idea to explicitly set it in your startup scripts ("~/.profile") even if it is to the same value as the default. Even if the default changes your environment will remain as it is. I suggest to add a line

Code:

LANG=C ; export LANG

to your profile or shell startup script. The "export" keyword will make sure every process started from this process inherits this setting. Btw.: the same is true for other environment settings one of your programs depend on. Set these explicitly, even if it is to the same value the variable already has. When the default changes you avoid possible problems.

I hope this helps.

bakunin