ASCII considerations
The compiler supports the American National Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) for magnetic tape files. Thus, the programmer can create and process tape files recorded in accordance with several standards.
The standards are:
- American National Standard Code for Information Interchange, X3.4-1977
- American National Standard Magnetic Tape Labels for Information Interchange, X3.27-1978
- American National Standard Recorded Magnetic Tape for Information Interchange (800 CPI, NRZI), X3.22-1967
Single-byte ASCII-encoded tape files, when read into the system, are automatically translated in the buffers into single-byte EBCDIC. Internal manipulation of data is performed exactly as if the ASCII files were single-byte EBCDIC-encoded files. For an output file, the system translates the EBCDIC characters into single-byte ASCII in the buffers before writing the file on tape. Therefore, there are special considerations concerning ASCII-encoded files when they are processed in COBOL.
This appendix also applies (with appropriate modifications) to the International Reference Version of the ISO 7-bit code defined in International Standard 646, 7-Bit Coded Character Set for Information Processing Interchange (ISCII). The ISCII code set differs from ASCII only in the graphic representation of two code points:
- Ordinal number 37, which is a dollar sign in ASCII, but a lozenge in ISCII
- Ordinal number 127, which is a tilde (~) in ASCII, but an overline (or optionally a tilde) in ISCII.
The following paragraphs discuss the special considerations concerning ASCII-encoded (or ISCII-encoded) files. The information given for STANDARD-1 also applies to STANDARD-2 except where otherwise specified.