ILE COBOL Programmer's Guide


Using Coded Character Set Identifiers

A Coded Character Set Identifier (CCSID) is a number identifying a specific set of encoding scheme identifiers, character set identifiers, code page identifiers, and additional coding-related information that uniquely identifies the coded graphic character representation used.

All valid ILE COBOL characters except $, @, and # are included in the Syntactic/Invariant Character Set 640. Characters in this set have the same code point in all single-byte EBCDIC code pages, except Code Page 290 (where the code points used for lower-case alphabetic characters in the other code pages are assigned to Katakana characters), and certain code pages which use a different code point for the " (quotes) character.

Note:
The @ and # characters support IBM extensions and conventions. The @ character can appear as a conversion specifier in a FORMAT clause literal. The @ and # characters are accepted as valid when checking a literal that defines a program name in a CALL statement.

The ILE COBOL compiler will accept source code written in any single-byte or mixed-byte EBCDIC CCSID, except those based on Code Page 290 (for example, CCSID 290 or CCSID 930). If the source code is stored in a stream file, it may have a non-EBCDIC CCSID. In this case, the compiler will convert the stream file to an EBCDIC CCSID related to the stream file's CCSID before compiling the source code.

CCSIDs can help you to maintain the integrity of character data across systems.

Character Data Representation Architecture (CDRA) defines CCSID values to identify the code points used to represent characters, and to convert these codes as needed to preserve their meanings.

The Extended ACCEPT and DISPLAY statements do not support CCSID conversion.


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