Processing data in an international environment
Enterprise COBOL supports Unicode UTF-16 as national character data at run time. UTF-16 provides a consistent and efficient way to encode plain text. Using UTF-16, you can develop software that will work with various national languages.
Use these COBOL facilities to code and compile programs that process national data:
- Data types and literals:
- Character data types, defined with the
USAGE NATIONAL
clause and aPICTURE
clause that defines data of category national, national-edited, or numeric-edited - Numeric data types, defined with the
USAGE NATIONAL
clause and aPICTURE
clause that defines a numeric data item (a national decimal item) or an external floating-point data item (a national floating-point item) - National literals, specified with literal prefix
N
orNX
- Figurative constant
ALL
national-literal - Figurative constants
QUOTE
,SPACE
,HIGH-VALUE
,LOW-VALUE
, orZERO
, which have national character (UTF-16) values when used in national-character contexts
- Character data types, defined with the
- The COBOL statements shown in the related reference below about COBOL statements and national data
- Intrinsic functions:
NATIONAL-OF
to convert an alphanumeric or double-byte character set (DBCS) character string toUSAGE NATIONAL
(UTF-16)DISPLAY-OF
to convert a national character string toUSAGE DISPLAY
in a selected code page (EBCDIC, ASCII, EUC, or UTF-8)- The other intrinsic functions shown in the related reference below about intrinsic functions and national data
- The
GROUP-USAGE NATIONAL
clause to define groups that contain onlyUSAGE NATIONAL
data items and that behave like elementary category national items in most operations - Compiler options:
CODEPAGE
to specify the code page to use for alphanumeric and DBCS data in your programNSYMBOL
to control whether national or DBCS processing is used for theN
symbol in literals andPICTURE
clauses
You can also take advantage of implicit conversions of alphanumeric or DBCS data items to national representation. The compiler performs such conversions (in most cases) when you move these items to national data items, or compare these items with national data items.
related tasks
Using national data (Unicode) in COBOL
Converting to or from national (Unicode) representation
Processing UTF-8 data
Processing Chinese GB 18030 data
Comparing national (UTF-16) data
Coding for use of DBCS support
Converting double-byte character set (DBCS) data
Using national data (Unicode) in COBOL
Converting to or from national (Unicode) representation
Processing UTF-8 data
Processing Chinese GB 18030 data
Comparing national (UTF-16) data
Coding for use of DBCS support
Converting double-byte character set (DBCS) data
related references
COBOL statements and national data
Intrinsic functions and national data
CODEPAGE
NSYMBOL
Classes and categories of data (Enterprise COBOL for z/OS Language Reference)
Data categories and PICTURE rules
(Enterprise COBOL for z/OS Language Reference)
MOVE statement (Enterprise COBOL for z/OS Language Reference)
General relation conditions (Enterprise COBOL for z/OS Language Reference)
COBOL statements and national data
Intrinsic functions and national data
CODEPAGE
NSYMBOL
Classes and categories of data (Enterprise COBOL for z/OS Language Reference)
Data categories and PICTURE rules
(Enterprise COBOL for z/OS Language Reference)
MOVE statement (Enterprise COBOL for z/OS Language Reference)
General relation conditions (Enterprise COBOL for z/OS Language Reference)