National Literals

Specify a national literal using the following notation:

N"string"

If the NSYMBOL(DBCS) directive is enabled, then the literal is a DBCS literal. If the NSYMBOL(NATIONAL) directive is enabled, then the literal is a national literal. In this case, the string is converted to Unicode (UTF-16) at run time according to the code page of the current locale.

See the section National Literals in the chapter Concepts of the COBOL Language in your Language Reference.