Working with EBCDIC values

kingofmf · New User Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 13 Location: Bangalore

In COBOL is it possible to work with EBCDIC values?
that means if i want to write a program which will convert a file content from uppercase to lower case,i can do it in C by changin the corresponding ASCII values,is there something like that in COBOL?
or suppose i want to print the EBCDIC value of a character are these things possible in COBOL?

mmwife · Super Moderator Joined: 30 May 2003 Posts: 1508

Hi Kingsuk,

You can do it but it's not easy and/or it's not pretty.

First thing you might check is the Enterprise COBOL intrinsic functions and callable services.

Or you can try stuff like this to go from upper to lower case:

Move the byte to a COMP halfwd (low-ord byte). Add 64 and it's now upper case.

As for printing the HEX value of a field, I've used the code below. The redefines are a bit overdone because I had other uses for the fields. But it should give you an idea of what you can do.