3 perlebcdic - Considerations for running Perl on EBCDIC platforms
7 An exploration of some of the issues facing Perl programmers
8 on EBCDIC based computers. We do not cover localization,
9 internationalization, or multi byte character set issues other
10 than some discussion of UTF-8 and UTF-EBCDIC.
12 Portions that are still incomplete are marked with XXX.
14 =head1 COMMON CHARACTER CODE SETS
18 The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII or US-ASCII) is a
20 integers running from 0 to 127 (decimal) that imply character
21 interpretation by the display and other systems of computers.
22 The range 0..127 can be covered by setting the bits in a 7-bit binary
23 digit, hence the set is sometimes referred to as a "7-bit ASCII".
24 ASCII was described by the American National Standards Institute
25 document ANSI X3.4-1986. It was also described by ISO 646:1991
26 (with localization for currency symbols). The full ASCII set is
27 given in the table below as the first 128 elements. Languages that
28 can be written adequately with the characters in ASCII include
29 English, Hawaiian, Indonesian, Swahili and some Native American
32 There are many character sets that extend the range of integers
33 from 0..2**7-1 up to 2**8-1, or 8 bit bytes (octets if you prefer).
34 One common one is the ISO 8859-1 character set.
38 The ISO 8859-$n are a collection of character code sets from the
39 International Organization for Standardization (ISO) each of which
40 adds characters to the ASCII set that are typically found in European
41 languages many of which are based on the Roman, or Latin, alphabet.
43 =head2 Latin 1 (ISO 8859-1)
45 A particular 8-bit extension to ASCII that includes grave and acute
46 accented Latin characters. Languages that can employ ISO 8859-1
47 include all the languages covered by ASCII as well as Afrikaans,
48 Albanian, Basque, Catalan, Danish, Faroese, Finnish, Norwegian,
49 Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. Dutch is covered albeit without
50 the ij ligature. French is covered too but without the oe ligature.
51 German can use ISO 8859-1 but must do so without German-style
52 quotation marks. This set is based on Western European extensions
53 to ASCII and is commonly encountered in world wide web work.
54 In IBM character code set identification terminology ISO 8859-1 is
55 also known as CCSID 819 (or sometimes 0819 or even 00819).
59 The Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code refers to a
60 large collection of slightly different single and multi byte
61 coded character sets that are different from ASCII or ISO 8859-1
62 and typically run on host computers. The EBCDIC encodings derive
63 from 8 bit byte extensions of Hollerith punched card encodings.
64 The layout on the cards was such that high bits were set for the
65 upper and lower case alphabet characters [a-z] and [A-Z], but there
66 were gaps within each Latin alphabet range.
68 Some IBM EBCDIC character sets may be known by character code set
69 identification numbers (CCSID numbers) or code page numbers. Leading
70 zero digits in CCSID numbers within this document are insignificant.
71 E.g. CCSID 0037 may be referred to as 37 in places.
73 Perl can be compiled on platforms that run any of three commonly used EBCDIC
74 character sets, listed below.
76 =head2 The 13 variant characters
78 Among IBM EBCDIC character code sets there are 13 characters that
79 are often mapped to different integer values. Those characters
80 are known as the 13 "variant" characters and are:
82 \ [ ] { } ^ ~ ! # | $ @ `
84 When Perl is compiled for a platform, it looks at some of these characters to
85 guess which EBCDIC character set the platform uses, and adapts itself
86 accordingly to that platform. If the platform uses a character set that is not
87 one of the three Perl knows about, Perl will either fail to compile, or
88 mistakenly and silently choose one of the three.
93 Character code set ID 0037 is a mapping of the ASCII plus Latin-1
94 characters (i.e. ISO 8859-1) to an EBCDIC set. 0037 is used
95 in North American English locales on the OS/400 operating system
96 that runs on AS/400 computers. CCSID 37 differs from ISO 8859-1
97 in 237 places, in other words they agree on only 19 code point values.
101 Character code set ID 1047 is also a mapping of the ASCII plus
102 Latin-1 characters (i.e. ISO 8859-1) to an EBCDIC set. 1047 is
103 used under Unix System Services for OS/390 or z/OS, and OpenEdition
104 for VM/ESA. CCSID 1047 differs from CCSID 0037 in eight places.
108 The EBCDIC code page in use on Siemens' BS2000 system is distinct from
109 1047 and 0037. It is identified below as the POSIX-BC set.
111 =head2 Unicode code points versus EBCDIC code points
113 In Unicode terminology a I<code point> is the number assigned to a
114 character: for example, in EBCDIC the character "A" is usually assigned
115 the number 193. In Unicode the character "A" is assigned the number 65.
116 This causes a problem with the semantics of the pack/unpack "U", which
117 are supposed to pack Unicode code points to characters and back to numbers.
118 The problem is: which code points to use for code points less than 256?
119 (for 256 and over there's no problem: Unicode code points are used)
120 In EBCDIC, for the low 256 the EBCDIC code points are used. This
121 means that the equivalences
123 pack("U", ord($character)) eq $character
124 unpack("U", $character) == ord $character
126 will hold. (If Unicode code points were applied consistently over
127 all the possible code points, pack("U",ord("A")) would in EBCDIC
128 equal I<A with acute> or chr(101), and unpack("U", "A") would equal
129 65, or I<non-breaking space>, not 193, or ord "A".)
131 =head2 Remaining Perl Unicode problems in EBCDIC
137 Many of the remaining problems seem to be related to case-insensitive matching
141 The extensions Unicode::Collate and Unicode::Normalized are not
142 supported under EBCDIC, likewise for the encoding pragma.
146 =head2 Unicode and UTF
148 UTF stands for C<Unicode Transformation Format>.
149 UTF-8 is an encoding of Unicode into a sequence of 8-bit byte chunks, based on
151 The length of a sequence required to represent a Unicode code point
152 depends on the ordinal number of that code point,
153 with larger numbers requiring more bytes.
154 UTF-EBCDIC is like UTF-8, but based on EBCDIC.
156 You may see the term C<invariant> character or code point.
157 This simply means that the character has the same numeric
158 value when encoded as when not.
159 (Note that this is a very different concept from L</The 13 variant characters>
161 For example, the ordinal value of 'A' is 193 in most EBCDIC code pages,
162 and also is 193 when encoded in UTF-EBCDIC.
163 All other code points occupy at least two bytes when encoded.
164 In UTF-8, the code points corresponding to the lowest 128
165 ordinal numbers (0 - 127: the ASCII characters) are invariant.
166 In UTF-EBCDIC, there are 160 invariant characters.
167 (If you care, the EBCDIC invariants are those characters
168 which have ASCII equivalents, plus those that correspond to
169 the C1 controls (80..9f on ASCII platforms).)
171 A string encoded in UTF-EBCDIC may be longer (but never shorter) than
172 one encoded in UTF-8.
176 Starting from Perl 5.8 you can use the standard new module Encode
177 to translate from EBCDIC to Latin-1 code points.
178 Encode knows about more EBCDIC character sets than Perl can currently
179 be compiled to run on.
181 use Encode 'from_to';
183 my %ebcdic = ( 176 => 'cp37', 95 => 'cp1047', 106 => 'posix-bc' );
185 # $a is in EBCDIC code points
186 from_to($a, $ebcdic{ord '^'}, 'latin1');
187 # $a is ISO 8859-1 code points
189 and from Latin-1 code points to EBCDIC code points
191 use Encode 'from_to';
193 my %ebcdic = ( 176 => 'cp37', 95 => 'cp1047', 106 => 'posix-bc' );
195 # $a is ISO 8859-1 code points
196 from_to($a, 'latin1', $ebcdic{ord '^'});
197 # $a is in EBCDIC code points
199 For doing I/O it is suggested that you use the autotranslating features
200 of PerlIO, see L<perluniintro>.
202 Since version 5.8 Perl uses the new PerlIO I/O library. This enables
203 you to use different encodings per IO channel. For example you may use
206 open($f, ">:encoding(ascii)", "test.ascii");
207 print $f "Hello World!\n";
208 open($f, ">:encoding(cp37)", "test.ebcdic");
209 print $f "Hello World!\n";
210 open($f, ">:encoding(latin1)", "test.latin1");
211 print $f "Hello World!\n";
212 open($f, ">:encoding(utf8)", "test.utf8");
213 print $f "Hello World!\n";
215 to get four files containing "Hello World!\n" in ASCII, CP 37 EBCDIC,
216 ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) (in this example identical to ASCII since only ASCII
217 characters were printed), and
218 UTF-EBCDIC (in this example identical to normal EBCDIC since only characters
219 that don't differ between EBCDIC and UTF-EBCDIC were printed). See the
220 documentation of Encode::PerlIO for details.
222 As the PerlIO layer uses raw IO (bytes) internally, all this totally
223 ignores things like the type of your filesystem (ASCII or EBCDIC).
225 =head1 SINGLE OCTET TABLES
227 The following tables list the ASCII and Latin 1 ordered sets including
228 the subsets: C0 controls (0..31), ASCII graphics (32..7e), delete (7f),
229 C1 controls (80..9f), and Latin-1 (a.k.a. ISO 8859-1) (a0..ff). In the
230 table non-printing control character names as well as the Latin 1
231 extensions to ASCII have been labelled with character names roughly
232 corresponding to I<The Unicode Standard, Version 3.0> albeit with
233 substitutions such as s/LATIN// and s/VULGAR// in all cases,
234 s/CAPITAL LETTER// in some cases, and s/SMALL LETTER ([A-Z])/\l$1/
235 in some other cases (the C<charnames> pragma names unfortunately do
236 not list explicit names for the C0 or C1 control characters). The
237 "names" of the C1 control set (128..159 in ISO 8859-1) listed here are
238 somewhat arbitrary. The differences between the 0037 and 1047 sets are
239 flagged with ***. The differences between the 1047 and POSIX-BC sets
240 are flagged with ###. All ord() numbers listed are decimal. If you
241 would rather see this table listing octal values then run the table
242 (that is, the pod version of this document since this recipe may not
243 work with a pod2_other_format translation) through:
251 perl -ne 'if(/(.{33})(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)/)' \
252 -e '{printf("%s%-9o%-9o%-9o%o\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5)}' perlebcdic.pod
254 If you want to retain the UTF-x code points then in script form you
263 open(FH,"<perlebcdic.pod") or die "Could not open perlebcdic.pod: $!";
265 if (/(.{33})(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\.?(\d*)\s+(\d+)\.?(\d*)/) {
266 if ($7 ne '' && $9 ne '') {
267 printf("%s%-9o%-9o%-9o%-9o%-3o.%-5o%-3o.%o\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7,$8,$9);
270 printf("%s%-9o%-9o%-9o%-9o%-3o.%-5o%o\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7,$8);
273 printf("%s%-9o%-9o%-9o%-9o%-9o%o\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$8);
278 If you would rather see this table listing hexadecimal values then
279 run the table through:
287 perl -ne 'if(/(.{33})(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)/)' \
288 -e '{printf("%s%-9X%-9X%-9X%X\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5)}' perlebcdic.pod
290 Or, in order to retain the UTF-x code points in hexadecimal:
298 open(FH,"<perlebcdic.pod") or die "Could not open perlebcdic.pod: $!";
300 if (/(.{33})(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\.?(\d*)\s+(\d+)\.?(\d*)/) {
301 if ($7 ne '' && $9 ne '') {
302 printf("%s%-9X%-9X%-9X%-9X%-2X.%-6X%-2X.%X\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7,$8,$9);
305 printf("%s%-9X%-9X%-9X%-9X%-2X.%-6X%X\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7,$8);
308 printf("%s%-9X%-9X%-9X%-9X%-9X%X\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$8);
316 chr 0819 0037 1047 POSIX-BC UTF-8 UTF-EBCDIC
317 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
319 <START OF HEADING> 1 1 1 1 1 1
320 <START OF TEXT> 2 2 2 2 2 2
321 <END OF TEXT> 3 3 3 3 3 3
322 <END OF TRANSMISSION> 4 55 55 55 4 55
323 <ENQUIRY> 5 45 45 45 5 45
324 <ACKNOWLEDGE> 6 46 46 46 6 46
325 <BELL> 7 47 47 47 7 47
326 <BACKSPACE> 8 22 22 22 8 22
327 <HORIZONTAL TABULATION> 9 5 5 5 9 5
328 <LINE FEED> 10 37 21 21 10 21 ***
329 <VERTICAL TABULATION> 11 11 11 11 11 11
330 <FORM FEED> 12 12 12 12 12 12
331 <CARRIAGE RETURN> 13 13 13 13 13 13
332 <SHIFT OUT> 14 14 14 14 14 14
333 <SHIFT IN> 15 15 15 15 15 15
334 <DATA LINK ESCAPE> 16 16 16 16 16 16
335 <DEVICE CONTROL ONE> 17 17 17 17 17 17
336 <DEVICE CONTROL TWO> 18 18 18 18 18 18
337 <DEVICE CONTROL THREE> 19 19 19 19 19 19
338 <DEVICE CONTROL FOUR> 20 60 60 60 20 60
339 <NEGATIVE ACKNOWLEDGE> 21 61 61 61 21 61
340 <SYNCHRONOUS IDLE> 22 50 50 50 22 50
341 <END OF TRANSMISSION BLOCK> 23 38 38 38 23 38
342 <CANCEL> 24 24 24 24 24 24
343 <END OF MEDIUM> 25 25 25 25 25 25
344 <SUBSTITUTE> 26 63 63 63 26 63
345 <ESCAPE> 27 39 39 39 27 39
346 <FILE SEPARATOR> 28 28 28 28 28 28
347 <GROUP SEPARATOR> 29 29 29 29 29 29
348 <RECORD SEPARATOR> 30 30 30 30 30 30
349 <UNIT SEPARATOR> 31 31 31 31 31 31
350 <SPACE> 32 64 64 64 32 64
352 " 34 127 127 127 34 127
353 # 35 123 123 123 35 123
355 % 37 108 108 108 37 108
357 ' 39 125 125 125 39 125
362 , 44 107 107 107 44 107
366 0 48 240 240 240 48 240
367 1 49 241 241 241 49 241
368 2 50 242 242 242 50 242
369 3 51 243 243 243 51 243
370 4 52 244 244 244 52 244
371 5 53 245 245 245 53 245
372 6 54 246 246 246 54 246
373 7 55 247 247 247 55 247
374 8 56 248 248 248 56 248
375 9 57 249 249 249 57 249
376 : 58 122 122 122 58 122
379 = 61 126 126 126 61 126
380 > 62 110 110 110 62 110
381 ? 63 111 111 111 63 111
382 @ 64 124 124 124 64 124
383 A 65 193 193 193 65 193
384 B 66 194 194 194 66 194
385 C 67 195 195 195 67 195
386 D 68 196 196 196 68 196
387 E 69 197 197 197 69 197
388 F 70 198 198 198 70 198
389 G 71 199 199 199 71 199
390 H 72 200 200 200 72 200
391 I 73 201 201 201 73 201
392 J 74 209 209 209 74 209
393 K 75 210 210 210 75 210
394 L 76 211 211 211 76 211
395 M 77 212 212 212 77 212
396 N 78 213 213 213 78 213
397 O 79 214 214 214 79 214
398 P 80 215 215 215 80 215
399 Q 81 216 216 216 81 216
400 R 82 217 217 217 82 217
401 S 83 226 226 226 83 226
402 T 84 227 227 227 84 227
403 U 85 228 228 228 85 228
404 V 86 229 229 229 86 229
405 W 87 230 230 230 87 230
406 X 88 231 231 231 88 231
407 Y 89 232 232 232 89 232
408 Z 90 233 233 233 90 233
409 [ 91 186 173 187 91 173 *** ###
410 \ 92 224 224 188 92 224 ###
411 ] 93 187 189 189 93 189 ***
412 ^ 94 176 95 106 94 95 *** ###
413 _ 95 109 109 109 95 109
414 ` 96 121 121 74 96 121 ###
415 a 97 129 129 129 97 129
416 b 98 130 130 130 98 130
417 c 99 131 131 131 99 131
418 d 100 132 132 132 100 132
419 e 101 133 133 133 101 133
420 f 102 134 134 134 102 134
421 g 103 135 135 135 103 135
422 h 104 136 136 136 104 136
423 i 105 137 137 137 105 137
424 j 106 145 145 145 106 145
425 k 107 146 146 146 107 146
426 l 108 147 147 147 108 147
427 m 109 148 148 148 109 148
428 n 110 149 149 149 110 149
429 o 111 150 150 150 111 150
430 p 112 151 151 151 112 151
431 q 113 152 152 152 113 152
432 r 114 153 153 153 114 153
433 s 115 162 162 162 115 162
434 t 116 163 163 163 116 163
435 u 117 164 164 164 117 164
436 v 118 165 165 165 118 165
437 w 119 166 166 166 119 166
438 x 120 167 167 167 120 167
439 y 121 168 168 168 121 168
440 z 122 169 169 169 122 169
441 { 123 192 192 251 123 192 ###
442 | 124 79 79 79 124 79
443 } 125 208 208 253 125 208 ###
444 ~ 126 161 161 255 126 161 ###
445 <DELETE> 127 7 7 7 127 7
446 <C1 0> 128 32 32 32 194.128 32
447 <C1 1> 129 33 33 33 194.129 33
448 <C1 2> 130 34 34 34 194.130 34
449 <C1 3> 131 35 35 35 194.131 35
450 <C1 4> 132 36 36 36 194.132 36
451 <C1 5> 133 21 37 37 194.133 37 ***
452 <C1 6> 134 6 6 6 194.134 6
453 <C1 7> 135 23 23 23 194.135 23
454 <C1 8> 136 40 40 40 194.136 40
455 <C1 9> 137 41 41 41 194.137 41
456 <C1 10> 138 42 42 42 194.138 42
457 <C1 11> 139 43 43 43 194.139 43
458 <C1 12> 140 44 44 44 194.140 44
459 <C1 13> 141 9 9 9 194.141 9
460 <C1 14> 142 10 10 10 194.142 10
461 <C1 15> 143 27 27 27 194.143 27
462 <C1 16> 144 48 48 48 194.144 48
463 <C1 17> 145 49 49 49 194.145 49
464 <C1 18> 146 26 26 26 194.146 26
465 <C1 19> 147 51 51 51 194.147 51
466 <C1 20> 148 52 52 52 194.148 52
467 <C1 21> 149 53 53 53 194.149 53
468 <C1 22> 150 54 54 54 194.150 54
469 <C1 23> 151 8 8 8 194.151 8
470 <C1 24> 152 56 56 56 194.152 56
471 <C1 25> 153 57 57 57 194.153 57
472 <C1 26> 154 58 58 58 194.154 58
473 <C1 27> 155 59 59 59 194.155 59
474 <C1 28> 156 4 4 4 194.156 4
475 <C1 29> 157 20 20 20 194.157 20
476 <C1 30> 158 62 62 62 194.158 62
477 <C1 31> 159 255 255 95 194.159 255 ###
478 <NON-BREAKING SPACE> 160 65 65 65 194.160 128.65
479 <INVERTED EXCLAMATION MARK> 161 170 170 170 194.161 128.66
480 <CENT SIGN> 162 74 74 176 194.162 128.67 ###
481 <POUND SIGN> 163 177 177 177 194.163 128.68
482 <CURRENCY SIGN> 164 159 159 159 194.164 128.69
483 <YEN SIGN> 165 178 178 178 194.165 128.70
484 <BROKEN BAR> 166 106 106 208 194.166 128.71 ###
485 <SECTION SIGN> 167 181 181 181 194.167 128.72
486 <DIAERESIS> 168 189 187 121 194.168 128.73 *** ###
487 <COPYRIGHT SIGN> 169 180 180 180 194.169 128.74
488 <FEMININE ORDINAL INDICATOR> 170 154 154 154 194.170 128.81
489 <LEFT POINTING GUILLEMET> 171 138 138 138 194.171 128.82
490 <NOT SIGN> 172 95 176 186 194.172 128.83 *** ###
491 <SOFT HYPHEN> 173 202 202 202 194.173 128.84
492 <REGISTERED TRADE MARK SIGN> 174 175 175 175 194.174 128.85
493 <MACRON> 175 188 188 161 194.175 128.86 ###
494 <DEGREE SIGN> 176 144 144 144 194.176 128.87
495 <PLUS-OR-MINUS SIGN> 177 143 143 143 194.177 128.88
496 <SUPERSCRIPT TWO> 178 234 234 234 194.178 128.89
497 <SUPERSCRIPT THREE> 179 250 250 250 194.179 128.98
498 <ACUTE ACCENT> 180 190 190 190 194.180 128.99
499 <MICRO SIGN> 181 160 160 160 194.181 128.100
500 <PARAGRAPH SIGN> 182 182 182 182 194.182 128.101
501 <MIDDLE DOT> 183 179 179 179 194.183 128.102
502 <CEDILLA> 184 157 157 157 194.184 128.103
503 <SUPERSCRIPT ONE> 185 218 218 218 194.185 128.104
504 <MASC. ORDINAL INDICATOR> 186 155 155 155 194.186 128.105
505 <RIGHT POINTING GUILLEMET> 187 139 139 139 194.187 128.106
506 <FRACTION ONE QUARTER> 188 183 183 183 194.188 128.112
507 <FRACTION ONE HALF> 189 184 184 184 194.189 128.113
508 <FRACTION THREE QUARTERS> 190 185 185 185 194.190 128.114
509 <INVERTED QUESTION MARK> 191 171 171 171 194.191 128.115
510 <A WITH GRAVE> 192 100 100 100 195.128 138.65
511 <A WITH ACUTE> 193 101 101 101 195.129 138.66
512 <A WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 194 98 98 98 195.130 138.67
513 <A WITH TILDE> 195 102 102 102 195.131 138.68
514 <A WITH DIAERESIS> 196 99 99 99 195.132 138.69
515 <A WITH RING ABOVE> 197 103 103 103 195.133 138.70
516 <CAPITAL LIGATURE AE> 198 158 158 158 195.134 138.71
517 <C WITH CEDILLA> 199 104 104 104 195.135 138.72
518 <E WITH GRAVE> 200 116 116 116 195.136 138.73
519 <E WITH ACUTE> 201 113 113 113 195.137 138.74
520 <E WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 202 114 114 114 195.138 138.81
521 <E WITH DIAERESIS> 203 115 115 115 195.139 138.82
522 <I WITH GRAVE> 204 120 120 120 195.140 138.83
523 <I WITH ACUTE> 205 117 117 117 195.141 138.84
524 <I WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 206 118 118 118 195.142 138.85
525 <I WITH DIAERESIS> 207 119 119 119 195.143 138.86
526 <CAPITAL LETTER ETH> 208 172 172 172 195.144 138.87
527 <N WITH TILDE> 209 105 105 105 195.145 138.88
528 <O WITH GRAVE> 210 237 237 237 195.146 138.89
529 <O WITH ACUTE> 211 238 238 238 195.147 138.98
530 <O WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 212 235 235 235 195.148 138.99
531 <O WITH TILDE> 213 239 239 239 195.149 138.100
532 <O WITH DIAERESIS> 214 236 236 236 195.150 138.101
533 <MULTIPLICATION SIGN> 215 191 191 191 195.151 138.102
534 <O WITH STROKE> 216 128 128 128 195.152 138.103
535 <U WITH GRAVE> 217 253 253 224 195.153 138.104 ###
536 <U WITH ACUTE> 218 254 254 254 195.154 138.105
537 <U WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 219 251 251 221 195.155 138.106 ###
538 <U WITH DIAERESIS> 220 252 252 252 195.156 138.112
539 <Y WITH ACUTE> 221 173 186 173 195.157 138.113 *** ###
540 <CAPITAL LETTER THORN> 222 174 174 174 195.158 138.114
541 <SMALL LETTER SHARP S> 223 89 89 89 195.159 138.115
542 <a WITH GRAVE> 224 68 68 68 195.160 139.65
543 <a WITH ACUTE> 225 69 69 69 195.161 139.66
544 <a WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 226 66 66 66 195.162 139.67
545 <a WITH TILDE> 227 70 70 70 195.163 139.68
546 <a WITH DIAERESIS> 228 67 67 67 195.164 139.69
547 <a WITH RING ABOVE> 229 71 71 71 195.165 139.70
548 <SMALL LIGATURE ae> 230 156 156 156 195.166 139.71
549 <c WITH CEDILLA> 231 72 72 72 195.167 139.72
550 <e WITH GRAVE> 232 84 84 84 195.168 139.73
551 <e WITH ACUTE> 233 81 81 81 195.169 139.74
552 <e WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 234 82 82 82 195.170 139.81
553 <e WITH DIAERESIS> 235 83 83 83 195.171 139.82
554 <i WITH GRAVE> 236 88 88 88 195.172 139.83
555 <i WITH ACUTE> 237 85 85 85 195.173 139.84
556 <i WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 238 86 86 86 195.174 139.85
557 <i WITH DIAERESIS> 239 87 87 87 195.175 139.86
558 <SMALL LETTER eth> 240 140 140 140 195.176 139.87
559 <n WITH TILDE> 241 73 73 73 195.177 139.88
560 <o WITH GRAVE> 242 205 205 205 195.178 139.89
561 <o WITH ACUTE> 243 206 206 206 195.179 139.98
562 <o WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 244 203 203 203 195.180 139.99
563 <o WITH TILDE> 245 207 207 207 195.181 139.100
564 <o WITH DIAERESIS> 246 204 204 204 195.182 139.101
565 <DIVISION SIGN> 247 225 225 225 195.183 139.102
566 <o WITH STROKE> 248 112 112 112 195.184 139.103
567 <u WITH GRAVE> 249 221 221 192 195.185 139.104 ###
568 <u WITH ACUTE> 250 222 222 222 195.186 139.105
569 <u WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 251 219 219 219 195.187 139.106
570 <u WITH DIAERESIS> 252 220 220 220 195.188 139.112
571 <y WITH ACUTE> 253 141 141 141 195.189 139.113
572 <SMALL LETTER thorn> 254 142 142 142 195.190 139.114
573 <y WITH DIAERESIS> 255 223 223 223 195.191 139.115
575 If you would rather see the above table in CCSID 0037 order rather than
576 ASCII + Latin-1 order then run the table through:
584 perl -ne 'if(/.{33}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}/)'\
586 -e 'END{print map{$_->[0]}' \
587 -e ' sort{$a->[1] <=> $b->[1]}' \
588 -e ' map{[$_,substr($_,42,3)]}@l;}' perlebcdic.pod
590 If you would rather see it in CCSID 1047 order then change the digit
591 42 in the last line to 51, like this:
599 perl -ne 'if(/.{33}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}/)'\
601 -e 'END{print map{$_->[0]}' \
602 -e ' sort{$a->[1] <=> $b->[1]}' \
603 -e ' map{[$_,substr($_,51,3)]}@l;}' perlebcdic.pod
605 If you would rather see it in POSIX-BC order then change the digit
606 51 in the last line to 60, like this:
614 perl -ne 'if(/.{33}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}/)'\
616 -e 'END{print map{$_->[0]}' \
617 -e ' sort{$a->[1] <=> $b->[1]}' \
618 -e ' map{[$_,substr($_,60,3)]}@l;}' perlebcdic.pod
621 =head1 IDENTIFYING CHARACTER CODE SETS
623 To determine the character set you are running under from perl one
624 could use the return value of ord() or chr() to test one or more
625 character values. For example:
627 $is_ascii = "A" eq chr(65);
628 $is_ebcdic = "A" eq chr(193);
630 Also, "\t" is a C<HORIZONTAL TABULATION> character so that:
632 $is_ascii = ord("\t") == 9;
633 $is_ebcdic = ord("\t") == 5;
635 To distinguish EBCDIC code pages try looking at one or more of
636 the characters that differ between them. For example:
638 $is_ebcdic_37 = "\n" eq chr(37);
639 $is_ebcdic_1047 = "\n" eq chr(21);
641 Or better still choose a character that is uniquely encoded in any
642 of the code sets, e.g.:
644 $is_ascii = ord('[') == 91;
645 $is_ebcdic_37 = ord('[') == 186;
646 $is_ebcdic_1047 = ord('[') == 173;
647 $is_ebcdic_POSIX_BC = ord('[') == 187;
649 However, it would be unwise to write tests such as:
651 $is_ascii = "\r" ne chr(13); # WRONG
652 $is_ascii = "\n" ne chr(10); # ILL ADVISED
654 Obviously the first of these will fail to distinguish most ASCII platforms
655 from either a CCSID 0037, a 1047, or a POSIX-BC EBCDIC platform since "\r" eq
656 chr(13) under all of those coded character sets. But note too that
657 because "\n" is chr(13) and "\r" is chr(10) on the MacIntosh (which is an
658 ASCII platform) the second C<$is_ascii> test will lead to trouble there.
660 To determine whether or not perl was built under an EBCDIC
661 code page you can use the Config module like so:
664 $is_ebcdic = $Config{'ebcdic'} eq 'define';
670 In order to convert a string of characters from one character set to
671 another a simple list of numbers, such as in the right columns in the
672 above table, along with perl's tr/// operator is all that is needed.
673 The data in the table are in ASCII order hence the EBCDIC columns
674 provide easy to use ASCII to EBCDIC operations that are also easily
677 For example, to convert ASCII to code page 037 take the output of the second
678 column from the output of recipe 0 (modified to add \\ characters) and use
682 '\000\001\002\003\234\011\206\177\227\215\216\013\014\015\016\017' .
683 '\020\021\022\023\235\205\010\207\030\031\222\217\034\035\036\037' .
684 '\200\201\202\203\204\012\027\033\210\211\212\213\214\005\006\007' .
685 '\220\221\026\223\224\225\226\004\230\231\232\233\024\025\236\032' .
686 '\040\240\342\344\340\341\343\345\347\361\242\056\074\050\053\174' .
687 '\046\351\352\353\350\355\356\357\354\337\041\044\052\051\073\254' .
688 '\055\057\302\304\300\301\303\305\307\321\246\054\045\137\076\077' .
689 '\370\311\312\313\310\315\316\317\314\140\072\043\100\047\075\042' .
690 '\330\141\142\143\144\145\146\147\150\151\253\273\360\375\376\261' .
691 '\260\152\153\154\155\156\157\160\161\162\252\272\346\270\306\244' .
692 '\265\176\163\164\165\166\167\170\171\172\241\277\320\335\336\256' .
693 '\136\243\245\267\251\247\266\274\275\276\133\135\257\250\264\327' .
694 '\173\101\102\103\104\105\106\107\110\111\255\364\366\362\363\365' .
695 '\175\112\113\114\115\116\117\120\121\122\271\373\374\371\372\377' .
696 '\134\367\123\124\125\126\127\130\131\132\262\324\326\322\323\325' .
697 '\060\061\062\063\064\065\066\067\070\071\263\333\334\331\332\237' ;
699 my $ebcdic_string = $ascii_string;
700 eval '$ebcdic_string =~ tr/' . $cp_037 . '/\000-\377/';
702 To convert from EBCDIC 037 to ASCII just reverse the order of the tr///
705 my $ascii_string = $ebcdic_string;
706 eval '$ascii_string =~ tr/\000-\377/' . $cp_037 . '/';
708 Similarly one could take the output of the third column from recipe 0 to
709 obtain a C<$cp_1047> table. The fourth column of the output from recipe
710 0 could provide a C<$cp_posix_bc> table suitable for transcoding as well.
714 XPG operability often implies the presence of an I<iconv> utility
715 available from the shell or from the C library. Consult your system's
716 documentation for information on iconv.
718 On OS/390 or z/OS see the iconv(1) manpage. One way to invoke the iconv
719 shell utility from within perl would be to:
721 # OS/390 or z/OS example
722 $ascii_data = `echo '$ebcdic_data'| iconv -f IBM-1047 -t ISO8859-1`
726 # OS/390 or z/OS example
727 $ebcdic_data = `echo '$ascii_data'| iconv -f ISO8859-1 -t IBM-1047`
729 For other perl based conversion options see the Convert::* modules on CPAN.
733 The OS/390 and z/OS C run time libraries provide _atoe() and _etoa() functions.
735 =head1 OPERATOR DIFFERENCES
737 The C<..> range operator treats certain character ranges with
738 care on EBCDIC platforms. For example the following array
739 will have twenty six elements on either an EBCDIC platform
740 or an ASCII platform:
742 @alphabet = ('A'..'Z'); # $#alphabet == 25
744 The bitwise operators such as & ^ | may return different results
745 when operating on string or character data in a perl program running
746 on an EBCDIC platform than when run on an ASCII platform. Here is
747 an example adapted from the one in L<perlop>:
749 # EBCDIC-based examples
750 print "j p \n" ^ " a h"; # prints "JAPH\n"
751 print "JA" | " ph\n"; # prints "japh\n"
752 print "JAPH\nJunk" & "\277\277\277\277\277"; # prints "japh\n";
753 print 'p N$' ^ " E<H\n"; # prints "Perl\n";
755 An interesting property of the 32 C0 control characters
756 in the ASCII table is that they can "literally" be constructed
757 as control characters in perl, e.g. C<(chr(0) eq "\c@")>
758 C<(chr(1) eq "\cA")>, and so on. Perl on EBCDIC platforms has been
759 ported to take "\c@" to chr(0) and "\cA" to chr(1) as well, but the
760 thirty three characters that result depend on which code page you are
761 using. The table below uses the character names from the previous table
762 but with substitutions such as s/START OF/S.O./; s/END OF /E.O./;
763 s/TRANSMISSION/TRANS./; s/TABULATION/TAB./; s/VERTICAL/VERT./;
764 s/HORIZONTAL/HORIZ./; s/DEVICE CONTROL/D.C./; s/SEPARATOR/SEP./;
765 s/NEGATIVE ACKNOWLEDGE/NEG. ACK./;. The POSIX-BC and 1047 sets are
766 identical throughout this range and differ from the 0037 set at only
767 one spot (21 decimal). Note that the C<LINE FEED> character
768 may be generated by "\cJ" on ASCII platforms but by "\cU" on 1047 or POSIX-BC
769 platforms and cannot be generated as a C<"\c.letter."> control character on
770 0037 platforms. Note also that "\c\\" maps to two characters
773 chr ord 8859-1 0037 1047 && POSIX-BC
774 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
775 "\c?" 127 <DELETE> " " ***><
776 "\c@" 0 <NULL> <NULL> <NULL> ***><
777 "\cA" 1 <S.O. HEADING> <S.O. HEADING> <S.O. HEADING>
778 "\cB" 2 <S.O. TEXT> <S.O. TEXT> <S.O. TEXT>
779 "\cC" 3 <E.O. TEXT> <E.O. TEXT> <E.O. TEXT>
780 "\cD" 4 <E.O. TRANS.> <C1 28> <C1 28>
781 "\cE" 5 <ENQUIRY> <HORIZ. TAB.> <HORIZ. TAB.>
782 "\cF" 6 <ACKNOWLEDGE> <C1 6> <C1 6>
783 "\cG" 7 <BELL> <DELETE> <DELETE>
784 "\cH" 8 <BACKSPACE> <C1 23> <C1 23>
785 "\cI" 9 <HORIZ. TAB.> <C1 13> <C1 13>
786 "\cJ" 10 <LINE FEED> <C1 14> <C1 14>
787 "\cK" 11 <VERT. TAB.> <VERT. TAB.> <VERT. TAB.>
788 "\cL" 12 <FORM FEED> <FORM FEED> <FORM FEED>
789 "\cM" 13 <CARRIAGE RETURN> <CARRIAGE RETURN> <CARRIAGE RETURN>
790 "\cN" 14 <SHIFT OUT> <SHIFT OUT> <SHIFT OUT>
791 "\cO" 15 <SHIFT IN> <SHIFT IN> <SHIFT IN>
792 "\cP" 16 <DATA LINK ESCAPE> <DATA LINK ESCAPE> <DATA LINK ESCAPE>
793 "\cQ" 17 <D.C. ONE> <D.C. ONE> <D.C. ONE>
794 "\cR" 18 <D.C. TWO> <D.C. TWO> <D.C. TWO>
795 "\cS" 19 <D.C. THREE> <D.C. THREE> <D.C. THREE>
796 "\cT" 20 <D.C. FOUR> <C1 29> <C1 29>
797 "\cU" 21 <NEG. ACK.> <C1 5> <LINE FEED> ***
798 "\cV" 22 <SYNCHRONOUS IDLE> <BACKSPACE> <BACKSPACE>
799 "\cW" 23 <E.O. TRANS. BLOCK> <C1 7> <C1 7>
800 "\cX" 24 <CANCEL> <CANCEL> <CANCEL>
801 "\cY" 25 <E.O. MEDIUM> <E.O. MEDIUM> <E.O. MEDIUM>
802 "\cZ" 26 <SUBSTITUTE> <C1 18> <C1 18>
803 "\c[" 27 <ESCAPE> <C1 15> <C1 15>
804 "\c\\" 28 <FILE SEP.>\ <FILE SEP.>\ <FILE SEP.>\
805 "\c]" 29 <GROUP SEP.> <GROUP SEP.> <GROUP SEP.>
806 "\c^" 30 <RECORD SEP.> <RECORD SEP.> <RECORD SEP.> ***><
807 "\c_" 31 <UNIT SEP.> <UNIT SEP.> <UNIT SEP.> ***><
810 =head1 FUNCTION DIFFERENCES
816 chr() must be given an EBCDIC code number argument to yield a desired
817 character return value on an EBCDIC platform. For example:
819 $CAPITAL_LETTER_A = chr(193);
823 ord() will return EBCDIC code number values on an EBCDIC platform.
826 $the_number_193 = ord("A");
830 The c and C templates for pack() are dependent upon character set
831 encoding. Examples of usage on EBCDIC include:
833 $foo = pack("CCCC",193,194,195,196);
835 $foo = pack("C4",193,194,195,196);
838 $foo = pack("ccxxcc",193,194,195,196);
843 One must be careful with scalars and strings that are passed to
844 print that contain ASCII encodings. One common place
845 for this to occur is in the output of the MIME type header for
846 CGI script writing. For example, many perl programming guides
847 recommend something similar to:
849 print "Content-type:\ttext/html\015\012\015\012";
850 # this may be wrong on EBCDIC
852 Under the IBM OS/390 USS Web Server or WebSphere on z/OS for example
853 you should instead write that as:
855 print "Content-type:\ttext/html\r\n\r\n"; # OK for DGW et alia
857 That is because the translation from EBCDIC to ASCII is done
858 by the web server in this case (such code will not be appropriate for
859 the Macintosh however). Consult your web server's documentation for
864 The formats that can convert characters to numbers and vice versa
865 will be different from their ASCII counterparts when executed
866 on an EBCDIC platform. Examples include:
868 printf("%c%c%c",193,194,195); # prints ABC
872 EBCDIC sort results may differ from ASCII sort results especially for
873 mixed case strings. This is discussed in more detail below.
877 See the discussion of printf() above. An example of the use
880 $CAPITAL_LETTER_A = sprintf("%c",193);
884 See the discussion of pack() above.
888 =head1 REGULAR EXPRESSION DIFFERENCES
890 As of perl 5.005_03 the letter range regular expression such as
891 [A-Z] and [a-z] have been especially coded to not pick up gap
892 characters. For example, characters such as E<ocirc> C<o WITH CIRCUMFLEX>
893 that lie between I and J would not be matched by the
894 regular expression range C</[H-K]/>. This works in
895 the other direction, too, if either of the range end points is
896 explicitly numeric: C<[\x89-\x91]> will match C<\x8e>, even
897 though C<\x89> is C<i> and C<\x91 > is C<j>, and C<\x8e>
898 is a gap character from the alphabetic viewpoint.
900 If you do want to match the alphabet gap characters in a single octet
901 regular expression try matching the hex or octal code such
902 as C</\313/> on EBCDIC or C</\364/> on ASCII platforms to
903 have your regular expression match C<o WITH CIRCUMFLEX>.
905 Another construct to be wary of is the inappropriate use of hex or
906 octal constants in regular expressions. Consider the following
910 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
911 $char =~ /[\000-\037]/;
915 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
916 $char =~ /[\040-\176]/;
920 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
925 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
926 $char =~ /[\200-\237]/;
930 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
931 $char =~ /[\240-\377]/;
934 The above would be adequate if the concern was only with numeric code points.
935 However, the concern may be with characters rather than code points
936 and on an EBCDIC platform it may be desirable for constructs such as
937 C<if (is_print_ascii("A")) {print "A is a printable character\n";}> to print
938 out the expected message. One way to represent the above collection
939 of character classification subs that is capable of working across the
940 four coded character sets discussed in this document is as follows:
943 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
944 if (ord('^')==94) { # ascii
945 return $char =~ /[\000-\037]/;
947 if (ord('^')==176) { # 37
948 return $char =~ /[\000-\003\067\055-\057\026\005\045\013-\023\074\075\062\046\030\031\077\047\034-\037]/;
950 if (ord('^')==95 || ord('^')==106) { # 1047 || posix-bc
951 return $char =~ /[\000-\003\067\055-\057\026\005\025\013-\023\074\075\062\046\030\031\077\047\034-\037]/;
956 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
957 $char =~ /[ !"\#\$%&'()*+,\-.\/0-9:;<=>?\@A-Z[\\\]^_`a-z{|}~]/;
961 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
962 if (ord('^')==94) { # ascii
963 return $char eq "\177";
966 return $char eq "\007";
971 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
972 if (ord('^')==94) { # ascii
973 return $char =~ /[\200-\237]/;
975 if (ord('^')==176) { # 37
976 return $char =~ /[\040-\044\025\006\027\050-\054\011\012\033\060\061\032\063-\066\010\070-\073\040\024\076\377]/;
978 if (ord('^')==95) { # 1047
979 return $char =~ /[\040-\045\006\027\050-\054\011\012\033\060\061\032\063-\066\010\070-\073\040\024\076\377]/;
981 if (ord('^')==106) { # posix-bc
983 /[\040-\045\006\027\050-\054\011\012\033\060\061\032\063-\066\010\070-\073\040\024\076\137]/;
988 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
989 if (ord('^')==94) { # ascii
990 return $char =~ /[\240-\377]/;
992 if (ord('^')==176) { # 37
994 /[\101\252\112\261\237\262\152\265\275\264\232\212\137\312\257\274\220\217\352\372\276\240\266\263\235\332\233\213\267\270\271\253\144\145\142\146\143\147\236\150\164\161-\163\170\165-\167\254\151\355\356\353\357\354\277\200\375\376\373\374\255\256\131\104\105\102\106\103\107\234\110\124\121-\123\130\125-\127\214\111\315\316\313\317\314\341\160\335\336\333\334\215\216\337]/;
996 if (ord('^')==95) { # 1047
998 /[\101\252\112\261\237\262\152\265\273\264\232\212\260\312\257\274\220\217\352\372\276\240\266\263\235\332\233\213\267\270\271\253\144\145\142\146\143\147\236\150\164\161-\163\170\165-\167\254\151\355\356\353\357\354\277\200\375\376\373\374\272\256\131\104\105\102\106\103\107\234\110\124\121-\123\130\125-\127\214\111\315\316\313\317\314\341\160\335\336\333\334\215\216\337]/;
1000 if (ord('^')==106) { # posix-bc
1002 /[\101\252\260\261\237\262\320\265\171\264\232\212\272\312\257\241\220\217\352\372\276\240\266\263\235\332\233\213\267\270\271\253\144\145\142\146\143\147\236\150\164\161-\163\170\165-\167\254\151\355\356\353\357\354\277\200\340\376\335\374\255\256\131\104\105\102\106\103\107\234\110\124\121-\123\130\125-\127\214\111\315\316\313\317\314\341\160\300\336\333\334\215\216\337]/;
1006 Note however that only the C<Is_ascii_print()> sub is really independent
1007 of coded character set. Another way to write C<Is_latin_1()> would be
1008 to use the characters in the range explicitly:
1011 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
1012 $char =~ /[ ¡¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª«¬®¯°±²³´µ¶·¸¹º»¼½¾¿ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõö÷øùúûüýþÿ]/;
1015 Although that form may run into trouble in network transit (due to the
1016 presence of 8 bit characters) or on non ISO-Latin character sets.
1020 Most socket programming assumes ASCII character encodings in network
1021 byte order. Exceptions can include CGI script writing under a
1022 host web server where the server may take care of translation for you.
1023 Most host web servers convert EBCDIC data to ISO-8859-1 or Unicode on
1028 One big difference between ASCII based character sets and EBCDIC ones
1029 are the relative positions of upper and lower case letters and the
1030 letters compared to the digits. If sorted on an ASCII based platform the
1031 two letter abbreviation for a physician comes before the two letter
1034 @sorted = sort(qw(Dr. dr.)); # @sorted holds ('Dr.','dr.') on ASCII,
1035 # but ('dr.','Dr.') on EBCDIC
1037 The property of lower case before uppercase letters in EBCDIC is
1038 even carried to the Latin 1 EBCDIC pages such as 0037 and 1047.
1039 An example would be that E<Euml> C<E WITH DIAERESIS> (203) comes
1040 before E<euml> C<e WITH DIAERESIS> (235) on an ASCII platform, but
1041 the latter (83) comes before the former (115) on an EBCDIC platform.
1042 (Astute readers will note that the upper case version of E<szlig>
1043 C<SMALL LETTER SHARP S> is simply "SS" and that the upper case version of
1044 E<yuml> C<y WITH DIAERESIS> is not in the 0..255 range but it is
1045 at U+x0178 in Unicode, or C<"\x{178}"> in a Unicode enabled Perl).
1047 The sort order will cause differences between results obtained on
1048 ASCII platforms versus EBCDIC platforms. What follows are some suggestions
1049 on how to deal with these differences.
1051 =head2 Ignore ASCII vs. EBCDIC sort differences.
1053 This is the least computationally expensive strategy. It may require
1054 some user education.
1056 =head2 MONO CASE then sort data.
1058 In order to minimize the expense of mono casing mixed test try to
1059 C<tr///> towards the character set case most employed within the data.
1060 If the data are primarily UPPERCASE non Latin 1 then apply tr/[a-z]/[A-Z]/
1061 then sort(). If the data are primarily lowercase non Latin 1 then
1062 apply tr/[A-Z]/[a-z]/ before sorting. If the data are primarily UPPERCASE
1063 and include Latin-1 characters then apply:
1066 tr/[àáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõöøùúûüýþ]/[ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖØÙÚÛÜÝÞ]/;
1069 then sort(). Do note however that such Latin-1 manipulation does not
1070 address the E<yuml> C<y WITH DIAERESIS> character that will remain at
1071 code point 255 on ASCII platforms, but 223 on most EBCDIC platforms
1072 where it will sort to a place less than the EBCDIC numerals. With a
1073 Unicode enabled Perl you might try:
1077 The strategy of mono casing data before sorting does not preserve the case
1078 of the data and may not be acceptable for that reason.
1080 =head2 Convert, sort data, then re convert.
1082 This is the most expensive proposition that does not employ a network
1085 =head2 Perform sorting on one type of platform only.
1087 This strategy can employ a network connection. As such
1088 it would be computationally expensive.
1090 =head1 TRANSFORMATION FORMATS
1092 There are a variety of ways of transforming data with an intra character set
1093 mapping that serve a variety of purposes. Sorting was discussed in the
1094 previous section and a few of the other more popular mapping techniques are
1097 =head2 URL decoding and encoding
1099 Note that some URLs have hexadecimal ASCII code points in them in an
1100 attempt to overcome character or protocol limitation issues. For example
1101 the tilde character is not on every keyboard hence a URL of the form:
1103 http://www.pvhp.com/~pvhp/
1105 may also be expressed as either of:
1107 http://www.pvhp.com/%7Epvhp/
1109 http://www.pvhp.com/%7epvhp/
1111 where 7E is the hexadecimal ASCII code point for '~'. Here is an example
1112 of decoding such a URL under CCSID 1047:
1114 $url = 'http://www.pvhp.com/%7Epvhp/';
1115 # this array assumes code page 1047
1117 0, 1, 2, 3, 55, 45, 46, 47, 22, 5, 21, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,
1118 16, 17, 18, 19, 60, 61, 50, 38, 24, 25, 63, 39, 28, 29, 30, 31,
1119 64, 90,127,123, 91,108, 80,125, 77, 93, 92, 78,107, 96, 75, 97,
1120 240,241,242,243,244,245,246,247,248,249,122, 94, 76,126,110,111,
1121 124,193,194,195,196,197,198,199,200,201,209,210,211,212,213,214,
1122 215,216,217,226,227,228,229,230,231,232,233,173,224,189, 95,109,
1123 121,129,130,131,132,133,134,135,136,137,145,146,147,148,149,150,
1124 151,152,153,162,163,164,165,166,167,168,169,192, 79,208,161, 7,
1125 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 6, 23, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 9, 10, 27,
1126 48, 49, 26, 51, 52, 53, 54, 8, 56, 57, 58, 59, 4, 20, 62,255,
1127 65,170, 74,177,159,178,106,181,187,180,154,138,176,202,175,188,
1128 144,143,234,250,190,160,182,179,157,218,155,139,183,184,185,171,
1129 100,101, 98,102, 99,103,158,104,116,113,114,115,120,117,118,119,
1130 172,105,237,238,235,239,236,191,128,253,254,251,252,186,174, 89,
1131 68, 69, 66, 70, 67, 71,156, 72, 84, 81, 82, 83, 88, 85, 86, 87,
1132 140, 73,205,206,203,207,204,225,112,221,222,219,220,141,142,223
1134 $url =~ s/%([0-9a-fA-F]{2})/pack("c",$a2e_1047[hex($1)])/ge;
1136 Conversely, here is a partial solution for the task of encoding such
1137 a URL under the 1047 code page:
1139 $url = 'http://www.pvhp.com/~pvhp/';
1140 # this array assumes code page 1047
1142 0, 1, 2, 3,156, 9,134,127,151,141,142, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,
1143 16, 17, 18, 19,157, 10, 8,135, 24, 25,146,143, 28, 29, 30, 31,
1144 128,129,130,131,132,133, 23, 27,136,137,138,139,140, 5, 6, 7,
1145 144,145, 22,147,148,149,150, 4,152,153,154,155, 20, 21,158, 26,
1146 32,160,226,228,224,225,227,229,231,241,162, 46, 60, 40, 43,124,
1147 38,233,234,235,232,237,238,239,236,223, 33, 36, 42, 41, 59, 94,
1148 45, 47,194,196,192,193,195,197,199,209,166, 44, 37, 95, 62, 63,
1149 248,201,202,203,200,205,206,207,204, 96, 58, 35, 64, 39, 61, 34,
1150 216, 97, 98, 99,100,101,102,103,104,105,171,187,240,253,254,177,
1151 176,106,107,108,109,110,111,112,113,114,170,186,230,184,198,164,
1152 181,126,115,116,117,118,119,120,121,122,161,191,208, 91,222,174,
1153 172,163,165,183,169,167,182,188,189,190,221,168,175, 93,180,215,
1154 123, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73,173,244,246,242,243,245,
1155 125, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82,185,251,252,249,250,255,
1156 92,247, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90,178,212,214,210,211,213,
1157 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57,179,219,220,217,218,159
1159 # The following regular expression does not address the
1160 # mappings for: ('.' => '%2E', '/' => '%2F', ':' => '%3A')
1161 $url =~ s/([\t "#%&\(\),;<=>\?\@\[\\\]^`{|}~])/sprintf("%%%02X",$e2a_1047[ord($1)])/ge;
1163 where a more complete solution would split the URL into components
1164 and apply a full s/// substitution only to the appropriate parts.
1166 In the remaining examples a @e2a or @a2e array may be employed
1167 but the assignment will not be shown explicitly. For code page 1047
1168 you could use the @a2e_1047 or @e2a_1047 arrays just shown.
1170 =head2 uu encoding and decoding
1172 The C<u> template to pack() or unpack() will render EBCDIC data in EBCDIC
1173 characters equivalent to their ASCII counterparts. For example, the
1174 following will print "Yes indeed\n" on either an ASCII or EBCDIC computer:
1176 $all_byte_chrs = '';
1177 for (0..255) { $all_byte_chrs .= chr($_); }
1178 $uuencode_byte_chrs = pack('u', $all_byte_chrs);
1179 ($uu = <<'ENDOFHEREDOC') =~ s/^\s*//gm;
1180 M``$"`P0%!@<("0H+#`T.#Q`1$A,4%187&!D:&QP='A\@(2(C)"4F)R@I*BLL
1181 M+2XO,#$R,S0U-C<X.3H[/#T^/T!!0D-$149'2$E*2TQ-3D]045)35%565UA9
1182 M6EM<75Y?8&%B8V1E9F=H:6IK;&UN;W!Q<G-T=79W>'EZ>WQ]?G^`@8*#A(6&
1183 MAXB)BHN,C8Z/D)&2DY25EI>8F9J;G)V>GZ"AHJ.DI::GJ*FJJZRMKJ^PL;*S
1184 MM+6VM[BYNKN\O;Z_P,'"P\3%QL?(R<K+S,W.S]#1TM/4U=;7V-G:V]S=WM_@
1185 ?X>+CY.7FY^CIZNOL[>[O\/'R\_3U]O?X^?K[_/W^_P``
1187 if ($uuencode_byte_chrs eq $uu) {
1190 $uudecode_byte_chrs = unpack('u', $uuencode_byte_chrs);
1191 if ($uudecode_byte_chrs eq $all_byte_chrs) {
1195 Here is a very spartan uudecoder that will work on EBCDIC provided
1196 that the @e2a array is filled in appropriately:
1198 #!/usr/local/bin/perl
1199 @e2a = ( # this must be filled in
1201 $_ = <> until ($mode,$file) = /^begin\s*(\d*)\s*(\S*)/;
1202 open(OUT, "> $file") if $file ne "";
1206 next unless int(((($e2a[ord()] - 32 ) & 077) + 2) / 3) ==
1208 print OUT unpack("u", $_);
1211 chmod oct($mode), $file;
1214 =head2 Quoted-Printable encoding and decoding
1216 On ASCII encoded platforms it is possible to strip characters outside of
1217 the printable set using:
1219 # This QP encoder works on ASCII only
1220 $qp_string =~ s/([=\x00-\x1F\x80-\xFF])/sprintf("=%02X",ord($1))/ge;
1222 Whereas a QP encoder that works on both ASCII and EBCDIC platforms
1223 would look somewhat like the following (where the EBCDIC branch @e2a
1224 array is omitted for brevity):
1226 if (ord('A') == 65) { # ASCII
1227 $delete = "\x7F"; # ASCII
1228 @e2a = (0 .. 255) # ASCII to ASCII identity map
1231 $delete = "\x07"; # EBCDIC
1232 @e2a = # EBCDIC to ASCII map (as shown above)
1235 s/([^ !"\#\$%&'()*+,\-.\/0-9:;<>?\@A-Z[\\\]^_`a-z{|}~$delete])/sprintf("=%02X",$e2a[ord($1)])/ge;
1237 (although in production code the substitutions might be done
1238 in the EBCDIC branch with the @e2a array and separately in the
1239 ASCII branch without the expense of the identity map).
1241 Such QP strings can be decoded with:
1243 # This QP decoder is limited to ASCII only
1244 $string =~ s/=([0-9A-Fa-f][0-9A-Fa-f])/chr hex $1/ge;
1245 $string =~ s/=[\n\r]+$//;
1247 Whereas a QP decoder that works on both ASCII and EBCDIC platforms
1248 would look somewhat like the following (where the @a2e array is
1249 omitted for brevity):
1251 $string =~ s/=([0-9A-Fa-f][0-9A-Fa-f])/chr $a2e[hex $1]/ge;
1252 $string =~ s/=[\n\r]+$//;
1254 =head2 Caesarian ciphers
1256 The practice of shifting an alphabet one or more characters for encipherment
1257 dates back thousands of years and was explicitly detailed by Gaius Julius
1258 Caesar in his B<Gallic Wars> text. A single alphabet shift is sometimes
1259 referred to as a rotation and the shift amount is given as a number $n after
1260 the string 'rot' or "rot$n". Rot0 and rot26 would designate identity maps
1261 on the 26 letter English version of the Latin alphabet. Rot13 has the
1262 interesting property that alternate subsequent invocations are identity maps
1263 (thus rot13 is its own non-trivial inverse in the group of 26 alphabet
1264 rotations). Hence the following is a rot13 encoder and decoder that will
1265 work on ASCII and EBCDIC platforms:
1267 #!/usr/local/bin/perl
1270 tr/n-za-mN-ZA-M/a-zA-Z/;
1276 perl -ne 'tr/n-za-mN-ZA-M/a-zA-Z/;print'
1279 =head1 Hashing order and checksums
1281 To the extent that it is possible to write code that depends on
1282 hashing order there may be differences between hashes as stored
1283 on an ASCII based platform and hashes stored on an EBCDIC based platform.
1286 =head1 I18N AND L10N
1288 Internationalization(I18N) and localization(L10N) are supported at least
1289 in principle even on EBCDIC platforms. The details are system dependent
1290 and discussed under the L<perlebcdic/OS ISSUES> section below.
1292 =head1 MULTI OCTET CHARACTER SETS
1294 Perl may work with an internal UTF-EBCDIC encoding form for wide characters
1295 on EBCDIC platforms in a manner analogous to the way that it works with
1296 the UTF-8 internal encoding form on ASCII based platforms.
1298 Legacy multi byte EBCDIC code pages XXX.
1302 There may be a few system dependent issues
1303 of concern to EBCDIC Perl programmers.
1311 The PASE environment is runtime environment for OS/400 that can run
1312 executables built for PowerPC AIX in OS/400, see L<perlos400>. PASE
1313 is ASCII-based, not EBCDIC-based as the ILE.
1323 Perl runs under Unix Systems Services or USS.
1329 B<chcp> is supported as a shell utility for displaying and changing
1330 one's code page. See also L<chcp>.
1332 =item dataset access
1334 For sequential data set access try:
1336 my @ds_records = `cat //DSNAME`;
1340 my @ds_records = `cat //'HLQ.DSNAME'`;
1342 See also the OS390::Stdio module on CPAN.
1344 =item OS/390, z/OS iconv
1346 B<iconv> is supported as both a shell utility and a C RTL routine.
1347 See also the iconv(1) and iconv(3) manual pages.
1351 On OS/390 or z/OS see L<locale> for information on locales. The L10N files
1352 are in F</usr/nls/locale>. $Config{d_setlocale} is 'define' on OS/390
1367 This pod document contains literal Latin 1 characters and may encounter
1368 translation difficulties. In particular one popular nroff implementation
1369 was known to strip accented characters to their unaccented counterparts
1370 while attempting to view this document through the B<pod2man> program
1371 (for example, you may see a plain C<y> rather than one with a diaeresis
1372 as in E<yuml>). Another nroff truncated the resultant manpage at
1373 the first occurrence of 8 bit characters.
1375 Not all shells will allow multiple C<-e> string arguments to perl to
1376 be concatenated together properly as recipes 0, 2, 4, 5, and 6 might
1381 L<perllocale>, L<perlfunc>, L<perlunicode>, L<utf8>.
1385 L<http://anubis.dkuug.dk/i18n/charmaps>
1387 L<http://www.unicode.org/>
1389 L<http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr16/>
1391 L<http://www.wps.com/texts/codes/>
1392 B<ASCII: American Standard Code for Information Infiltration> Tom Jennings,
1395 B<The Unicode Standard, Version 3.0> The Unicode Consortium, Lisa Moore ed.,
1396 ISBN 0-201-61633-5, Addison Wesley Developers Press, February 2000.
1398 B<CDRA: IBM - Character Data Representation Architecture -
1399 Reference and Registry>, IBM SC09-2190-00, December 1996.
1401 "Demystifying Character Sets", Andrea Vine, Multilingual Computing
1402 & Technology, B<#26 Vol. 10 Issue 4>, August/September 1999;
1403 ISSN 1523-0309; Multilingual Computing Inc. Sandpoint ID, USA.
1405 B<Codes, Ciphers, and Other Cryptic and Clandestine Communication>
1406 Fred B. Wrixon, ISBN 1-57912-040-7, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers,
1409 L<http://www.bobbemer.com/P-BIT.HTM>
1410 B<IBM - EBCDIC and the P-bit; The biggest Computer Goof Ever> Robert Bemer.
1414 15 April 2001: added UTF-8 and UTF-EBCDIC to main table, pvhp.
1418 Peter Prymmer pvhp@best.com wrote this in 1999 and 2000
1419 with CCSID 0819 and 0037 help from Chris Leach and
1420 AndrE<eacute> Pirard A.Pirard@ulg.ac.be as well as POSIX-BC
1421 help from Thomas Dorner Thomas.Dorner@start.de.
1422 Thanks also to Vickie Cooper, Philip Newton, William Raffloer, and
1423 Joe Smith. Trademarks, registered trademarks, service marks and
1424 registered service marks used in this document are the property of
1425 their respective owners.