The mechanism for mapping of methods to actual entry points will be described later. The set of customized methods need to be stored in a shared library. This is because in the new NLS architecture locales are implemented as shared libraries to allow for dynamic mapping of methods. This enables users to dynamically override default methods with customized ones during process execution. As mentioned earlier, actual function names for the customized methods should be different from the method name itself.
Comments can appear anywhere in the method file.
In between these two keywords, mappings are specified one per line. Each of the fileds above should be separated from the previous one by at least a space or tab character. However, in order to demonstrate how a method file can be prepared with various libraries, the nature of this example is rendered unusual. In this example, the american locale is customized such that mblen and mbtowc methods are overridden by the corresponding user code. To successfully generate these locales several requirements must be met.