title: Determining the NLS_LANG setting for an existing Oracle database dump file
body: <p>We were handed a dump file by another team who are gone away for the rest of the year. When we try to import the dump into our own database, we get the following error:</p>
  
  <pre>IMP-00038: Could not convert to environment character set's handle</pre>
  
  <p>Upon some research, our speculation is that we have a mismatch between the NLS_LANG setting of the source machine and our local machine. We currently don't have any means to check what the value of NLS_LANG is on the source machine.</p>
  
  <p>So, having just a dump file in our hands, is there a way to figure out the NLS_LANG value with which the export was done? From the looks of it, we should be able to override the NLS_LANG environment variable before running the import client (imp).</p>
  
  <p>Another thing is, the dump was done from an 11g instance and our imp version is 10. I read that imp is not forward compatible. Could this be the issue here (instead of the NLS_LANG mismatch)?</p>