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In the first article in this series, we introduced EBCDIC code pages, and how they work with z/OS. But z/OS became more complicated when UNIX Systems Services (USS) introduced ASCII into the mix. Web-enablement and XML add UTF-8 and other Unicode specifications as well. So how do EBCDIC, ASCII and Unicode work together?
NTFS file systems (and only NTFS file systems) support 'Alternate Data Streams' (ADS). These are basically 'invisible' files that attach themselves to existing files. For example, when you enable 'Thumbnails mode' in Windows Explorer, the thumbnail is sometimes stored in an ADS. Unfortunately, this can take up a lot of disk space - and the user.
- WnBrowse - File Viewer. WnBrowse is a multifunction ASCII, EBCDIC and Hex file viewer. View large files, including files within zip archives. Search for text, hex and UNICODE strings. Print the entire file or a selected portion. Integrated with the Windows Explorer for two-click file browsing. Works with all versions of Windows.
- This link provides a View of the COBOL Source Code and Copy File that does a file format and record content conversion from an ASCII/Text file to an EBCDIC encoded indexed file. Summary This is an example of how a COBOL program can read an ASCII/Text file and write an EBCDIC-Indexed file.
- This is a library built from two C# source files and the ebcdic.dat file generated by the reader. This library is all most users will need. More details are provided below. A test program This is a console application built from a single C# source file and requiring the library described above.
- How to convert EBCDIC to ASCII? You may be switching between systems or simply need the EBCDIC file on a windows system or server. In that case, you have to convert the file into ASCII, so that other systems such as PC can read it. Most of the file transfer systems have a built-in program to convert EBCDIC file to ASCII.
If you are a mainframe veteran like me, you work in EBCDIC. You use a TN3270 emulator to work with TSO/E and ISPF, you use datasets, and every program is EBCDIC. Or at least that's the way it used to be.
UNIX Systems Services (USS) has changed all that. Let's take a simple example. Outlook calendar download for mac. Providing it has been setup by the Systems Programmer, you can now use any Telnet client such as PuTTY to access z/OS using telnet, SSH or rlogin. From here, you get a standard UNIX shell that will feel like home to anyone who has used UNIX on any platform. telnet, SSH and rlogin are ASCII sessions. So z/OS (or more specifically, TCP/IP) will convert everything going to or from that telnet client between ASCII and EBCDIC.
Like EBCDIC, expanded ASCII has different code pages for different languages and regions, though not nearly as many. Most English speakers will use the ISO-8859-1 ASCII. If you're from Norway, you may prefer ISO-8859-6, and Russians will probably go for ISO-8859-5. In UNIX, the ASCII character set you use is part of the locale, which also includes currency symbol and date formats preferred. The locale is set using the setenv command to update the LANG or LC_* environment variables. You then set the Language on your Telnet client to the same, and you're away. Here is how it's done on PuTTY.
From the USS shell on z/OS, this is exactly the same (it is a POSIX compliant shell after all). So to change the locale to France, we use the USS setenv command: The first two characters are the language code specified in the ISO 639-1 standard and the second two the country code from ISO 3166-1.
Converting to and from ASCII on z/OS consumes resources. If you're only working with ASCII data, it would be a good idea to store the data in ASCII, and avoid the overhead of always converting between EBCDIC and ASCII.The good news is that this is no problem. ASCII is also a Single Byte Character Set (SBCS), so all the z/OS instructions and functions work just as well for ASCII as they do for EBCDIC. Database managers generally just store bytes. So if you don't need them to display the characters in a readable form on a screen, you can easily store ASCII in z/OS datasets, USS files and z/OS databases.
The problem is displaying that information. Using ISPF to edit a dataset with ASCII data will show gobbldy-gook - unreadable characters. ISPF browse has similar problems.
With traditional z/OS datasets, there's nothing you can do. However z/OS USS files have a tag that can specify the character set that used. For example, look at the ls listing of the USS file here:
You can see that the code page used is IBM-1047 - the default EBCDIC. The t to the left of the output indicates that the file holds text, and T=on indicates that the file holds uniformly encoded text data. However here is another file:
The character set is ISO8859-1: extended ASCII for English Speakers. This tag can be set using the USS ctag command. It can also be set when mounting a USS file system, setting the default tag for all files in that file system.
This tag can be used to determine how the file will be viewed. From z/OS 1.9, this means that if using ISPF edit or browse to access a dataset, ASCII characters will automatically be displayed if this tag is set to CCSID 819 (ISO8859-1). The TSO/E OBROWSE and OEDIT commands, ISPF option 3.17, or the ISHELL interface all use ISPF edit and browse.
If storing ASCII in traditional z/OS datasets, ISPF BROWSE and EDIT will not automatically convert from ASCII. Nor will it convert for any other character set other than ISO8859-1. However you can still view the ASCII data using the SOURCE ASCII command. Here is an example of how this command works.
Some database systems also store the code page. For example, have a look at the following output from the SAS PROC _CONTENTS procedure. This shows the definitions of a SAS table. You can see that it is encoded in EBCDIC 1142 (Denmark/Norway):
DB2 also plays this kind of ball. Every DB2 table can have an ENCODING_SCHEME variable assigned in SYSIBM.TABLES which overrides the default CCSID. This value can also be overridden in the SQL Descriptor Area for SQL statements, or in the stored procedure definition for stored procedures. You can also override specify CCSID when binding an application, or in the DB2 DECLARE or CAST statements.
Or in other words, if you define tables and applications correctly, DB2 will do all the translation for you.
Unicode has one big advantage over EBCDIC and ASCII: there are no code pages. Every character is represented in the same table. And the Standards people have made sure that Unicode has enough room for a lot more characters - even the Star Trek Klingon language characters get a mention.
But of course this would be too simple. There are actually a few different Unicodes out there:
- UTF-8: Multi-Byte character set, though most characters are just one byte. The basic ASCII characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9) are the same.
- UTF-16: Multi-byte characters set, though most characters are two bytes.
- UTF-32: Each character is four bytes.
Most high level languages have some sort of Unicode support, including C, COBOL and PL/1. However you need to tell these programs that you're using Unicode in compiler options or string manipulation options.
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z/OS also has instructions for converting between Unicode, UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32. By Unicode, IBM means Unicode Basic Latin: the first 255 characters of Unicode - which fit into one byte.
A problem with anything using Unicode on z/OS is that it can be expensive in terms of CPU use. To help out, IBM has introduced some new Assembler instructions oriented towards Unicode. Many of the latest high level language compilers use these when working with Unicode instructions - making these programs much faster. If you have a program that uses Unicode and hasn't been recompiled for a few years, consider recompiling it. You may see some performance improvements.
z/OS is still EBCDIC and always will be. However IBM has realised that z/OS needs to talk to the outside world, and so other character encoding schemes like ASCII and Unicode need to be supported - and are.
Download google chrome beta for mac. z/OS USS files have an attribute to tell you the encoding scheme, and some databases systems like SAS and DB2 also give you an attribute to set. Otherwise, you need to know yourself how the strings are encoded.
This second article has covered how EBCDIC, ASCII and Unicode work together with z/OS. In the final article in this series of three. I'll look at converting between them.
Quickly take an EBCDIC file and transform it to ASCII
A table of mainframe EBCDIC data it is almost useless without a proper conversion program. In addition to its many other conversion and analytics capabilities, Kirix Strata™ can also transform EBCDIC to ASCII. Instead of purchasing a costly conversion program or outsourcing conversion to a third-party, why not just let Strata do it for you? With Strata you can:
Ebcdic File Viewer Software
- Open and view EBCDIC data
- Convert EBCDIC to ASCII
- Immediately begin to work with and analyze the data set
- Transform your new table to a different format (CSV, MDB, SQL Server, Oracle, etc.)
- Create a script with EBCDIC offsets to develop repeatable processes
Watch a 90-second demonstration
Ebcdic File Viewer Notepad++
Ebcdic File Viewer Online
Want to explore data conversion further? Check out this tutorial video on opening, saving and converting data to learn more. Additionally, you can watch a video specifically on text-delimited file (e.g., CSV, TSV) conversion here.
UNIX Systems Services (USS) has changed all that. Let's take a simple example. Outlook calendar download for mac. Providing it has been setup by the Systems Programmer, you can now use any Telnet client such as PuTTY to access z/OS using telnet, SSH or rlogin. From here, you get a standard UNIX shell that will feel like home to anyone who has used UNIX on any platform. telnet, SSH and rlogin are ASCII sessions. So z/OS (or more specifically, TCP/IP) will convert everything going to or from that telnet client between ASCII and EBCDIC.
Like EBCDIC, expanded ASCII has different code pages for different languages and regions, though not nearly as many. Most English speakers will use the ISO-8859-1 ASCII. If you're from Norway, you may prefer ISO-8859-6, and Russians will probably go for ISO-8859-5. In UNIX, the ASCII character set you use is part of the locale, which also includes currency symbol and date formats preferred. The locale is set using the setenv command to update the LANG or LC_* environment variables. You then set the Language on your Telnet client to the same, and you're away. Here is how it's done on PuTTY.
From the USS shell on z/OS, this is exactly the same (it is a POSIX compliant shell after all). So to change the locale to France, we use the USS setenv command: The first two characters are the language code specified in the ISO 639-1 standard and the second two the country code from ISO 3166-1.
Converting to and from ASCII on z/OS consumes resources. If you're only working with ASCII data, it would be a good idea to store the data in ASCII, and avoid the overhead of always converting between EBCDIC and ASCII.The good news is that this is no problem. ASCII is also a Single Byte Character Set (SBCS), so all the z/OS instructions and functions work just as well for ASCII as they do for EBCDIC. Database managers generally just store bytes. So if you don't need them to display the characters in a readable form on a screen, you can easily store ASCII in z/OS datasets, USS files and z/OS databases.
The problem is displaying that information. Using ISPF to edit a dataset with ASCII data will show gobbldy-gook - unreadable characters. ISPF browse has similar problems.
With traditional z/OS datasets, there's nothing you can do. However z/OS USS files have a tag that can specify the character set that used. For example, look at the ls listing of the USS file here:
You can see that the code page used is IBM-1047 - the default EBCDIC. The t to the left of the output indicates that the file holds text, and T=on indicates that the file holds uniformly encoded text data. However here is another file:
The character set is ISO8859-1: extended ASCII for English Speakers. This tag can be set using the USS ctag command. It can also be set when mounting a USS file system, setting the default tag for all files in that file system.
This tag can be used to determine how the file will be viewed. From z/OS 1.9, this means that if using ISPF edit or browse to access a dataset, ASCII characters will automatically be displayed if this tag is set to CCSID 819 (ISO8859-1). The TSO/E OBROWSE and OEDIT commands, ISPF option 3.17, or the ISHELL interface all use ISPF edit and browse.
If storing ASCII in traditional z/OS datasets, ISPF BROWSE and EDIT will not automatically convert from ASCII. Nor will it convert for any other character set other than ISO8859-1. However you can still view the ASCII data using the SOURCE ASCII command. Here is an example of how this command works.
Some database systems also store the code page. For example, have a look at the following output from the SAS PROC _CONTENTS procedure. This shows the definitions of a SAS table. You can see that it is encoded in EBCDIC 1142 (Denmark/Norway):
DB2 also plays this kind of ball. Every DB2 table can have an ENCODING_SCHEME variable assigned in SYSIBM.TABLES which overrides the default CCSID. This value can also be overridden in the SQL Descriptor Area for SQL statements, or in the stored procedure definition for stored procedures. You can also override specify CCSID when binding an application, or in the DB2 DECLARE or CAST statements.
Or in other words, if you define tables and applications correctly, DB2 will do all the translation for you.
Unicode has one big advantage over EBCDIC and ASCII: there are no code pages. Every character is represented in the same table. And the Standards people have made sure that Unicode has enough room for a lot more characters - even the Star Trek Klingon language characters get a mention.
But of course this would be too simple. There are actually a few different Unicodes out there:
- UTF-8: Multi-Byte character set, though most characters are just one byte. The basic ASCII characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9) are the same.
- UTF-16: Multi-byte characters set, though most characters are two bytes.
- UTF-32: Each character is four bytes.
Most high level languages have some sort of Unicode support, including C, COBOL and PL/1. However you need to tell these programs that you're using Unicode in compiler options or string manipulation options.
Ebcdic File Viewer Free
z/OS also has instructions for converting between Unicode, UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32. By Unicode, IBM means Unicode Basic Latin: the first 255 characters of Unicode - which fit into one byte.
A problem with anything using Unicode on z/OS is that it can be expensive in terms of CPU use. To help out, IBM has introduced some new Assembler instructions oriented towards Unicode. Many of the latest high level language compilers use these when working with Unicode instructions - making these programs much faster. If you have a program that uses Unicode and hasn't been recompiled for a few years, consider recompiling it. You may see some performance improvements.
z/OS is still EBCDIC and always will be. However IBM has realised that z/OS needs to talk to the outside world, and so other character encoding schemes like ASCII and Unicode need to be supported - and are.
Download google chrome beta for mac. z/OS USS files have an attribute to tell you the encoding scheme, and some databases systems like SAS and DB2 also give you an attribute to set. Otherwise, you need to know yourself how the strings are encoded.
This second article has covered how EBCDIC, ASCII and Unicode work together with z/OS. In the final article in this series of three. I'll look at converting between them.
Quickly take an EBCDIC file and transform it to ASCII
A table of mainframe EBCDIC data it is almost useless without a proper conversion program. In addition to its many other conversion and analytics capabilities, Kirix Strata™ can also transform EBCDIC to ASCII. Instead of purchasing a costly conversion program or outsourcing conversion to a third-party, why not just let Strata do it for you? With Strata you can:
Ebcdic File Viewer Software
- Open and view EBCDIC data
- Convert EBCDIC to ASCII
- Immediately begin to work with and analyze the data set
- Transform your new table to a different format (CSV, MDB, SQL Server, Oracle, etc.)
- Create a script with EBCDIC offsets to develop repeatable processes
Watch a 90-second demonstration
Ebcdic File Viewer Notepad++
Ebcdic File Viewer Online
Want to explore data conversion further? Check out this tutorial video on opening, saving and converting data to learn more. Additionally, you can watch a video specifically on text-delimited file (e.g., CSV, TSV) conversion here.
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It's easy and risk-free; download a free, unrestricted 30 day trial of Strata now! The installation only takes a few minutes, so you can start working with your data immediately.
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If you'd like to take a little more time to explore further, we'd suggest you'd take a look at the Strata overview video or check out some other example applications. And, if you have any questions, please just let us know, we're always happy to help.
