On Tue, Aug 21, 2018 at 9:41 AM Phil Smith III <li...@akphs.com> wrote:
> Paul Gilmartin wrote: > > >There is one. It's called Unicode. IBM should open its eyes to the 21st > Century. > > Now that's funny! Sure, we'll just transform all our data from EBCDIC. > What I, personally, think would be nice is something which exists, somewhat, in z/OS UNIX files. That is "file tagging". In z/OS UNIX you can "tag" a file's contents to specify that the text in the file is in a particular CCSID (code page). What might be nice would be if every piece of data could, optionally, be "tagged" as having a CCSID for the data inside it. Of course, this only works when all the data inside is "textual" and not "binary". Anyway, tag the data as being in a particular CCSID. Then have a parameter on the DD statement which basically indicates the CCSID that the program expects its data to be in. If the data doesn't have a "tag", assume CP-037 for historical purposes. If the DD doesn't specify a CCSID, assume CP-037 too. So in the default case, the CCSIDs would both be CP-037 so no translation would be made. I am assuming that the access method would do the translation, using Unicode System Services, and would not do a conversion if the CCSIDs were identical. If the CCSIDs don't match, then the access method would use the Unicode services to do the translation on input & output. I am assuming that all members of a PDS would be in the same CCSID. I guess this could be extended for individual members in a PDSE version "2.1" or something. The tagging would be automatic if a file is created using JCL or DYNALLOC by using the CCSID specified in the DD or DYNALLOC. Again, defaulting to CP-037 for historic purposes. I'm not saying how this "tagging" would be implemented. I don't know if there is any room in the VTOC entry for a CCSID. Or if it would require something in the VVDS. And the problem remains for "mixed" data where the records contain both "binary" and "textual" information. -- Between infinite and short there is a big difference. -- G.H. Gonnet Maranatha! <>< John McKown ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
