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 is a set of
19 integers running from 0 to 127 (decimal) that imply character
20 interpretation by the display and other system(s) of computers.
21 The range 0..127 can be covered by setting the bits in a 7-bit binary
22 digit, hence the set is sometimes referred to as a "7-bit ASCII".
23 ASCII was described by the American National Standards Institute
24 document ANSI X3.4-1986. It was also described by ISO 646:1991
25 (with localization for currency symbols). The full ASCII set is
26 given in the table below as the first 128 elements. Languages that
27 can be written adequately with the characters in ASCII include
28 English, Hawaiian, Indonesian, Swahili and some Native American
31 There are many character sets that extend the range of integers
32 from 0..2**7-1 up to 2**8-1, or 8 bit bytes (octets if you prefer).
33 One common one is the ISO 8859-1 character set.
37 The ISO 8859-$n are a collection of character code sets from the
38 International Organization for Standardization (ISO) each of which
39 adds characters to the ASCII set that are typically found in European
40 languages many of which are based on the Roman, or Latin, alphabet.
42 =head2 Latin 1 (ISO 8859-1)
44 A particular 8-bit extension to ASCII that includes grave and acute
45 accented Latin characters. Languages that can employ ISO 8859-1
46 include all the languages covered by ASCII as well as Afrikaans,
47 Albanian, Basque, Catalan, Danish, Faroese, Finnish, Norwegian,
48 Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. Dutch is covered albeit without
49 the ij ligature. French is covered too but without the oe ligature.
50 German can use ISO 8859-1 but must do so without German-style
51 quotation marks. This set is based on Western European extensions
52 to ASCII and is commonly encountered in world wide web work.
53 In IBM character code set identification terminology ISO 8859-1 is
54 also known as CCSID 819 (or sometimes 0819 or even 00819).
58 The Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code refers to a
59 large collection of slightly different single and multi byte
60 coded character sets that are different from ASCII or ISO 8859-1
61 and typically run on host computers. The EBCDIC encodings derive
62 from 8 bit byte extensions of Hollerith punched card encodings.
63 The layout on the cards was such that high bits were set for the
64 upper and lower case alphabet characters [a-z] and [A-Z], but there
65 were gaps within each latin alphabet range.
67 Some IBM EBCDIC character sets may be known by character code set
68 identification numbers (CCSID numbers) or code page numbers. Leading
69 zero digits in CCSID numbers within this document are insignificant.
70 E.g. CCSID 0037 may be referred to as 37 in places.
72 =head2 13 variant characters
74 Among IBM EBCDIC character code sets there are 13 characters that
75 are often mapped to different integer values. Those characters
76 are known as the 13 "variant" characters and are:
78 \ [ ] { } ^ ~ ! # | $ @ `
82 Character code set ID 0037 is a mapping of the ASCII plus Latin-1
83 characters (i.e. ISO 8859-1) to an EBCDIC set. 0037 is used
84 in North American English locales on the OS/400 operating system
85 that runs on AS/400 computers. CCSID 37 differs from ISO 8859-1
86 in 237 places, in other words they agree on only 19 code point values.
90 Character code set ID 1047 is also a mapping of the ASCII plus
91 Latin-1 characters (i.e. ISO 8859-1) to an EBCDIC set. 1047 is
92 used under Unix System Services for OS/390 or z/OS, and OpenEdition
93 for VM/ESA. CCSID 1047 differs from CCSID 0037 in eight places.
97 The EBCDIC code page in use on Siemens' BS2000 system is distinct from
98 1047 and 0037. It is identified below as the POSIX-BC set.
100 =head2 Unicode code points versus EBCDIC code points
102 In Unicode terminology a I<code point> is the number assigned to a
103 character: for example, in EBCDIC the character "A" is usually assigned
104 the number 193. In Unicode the character "A" is assigned the number 65.
105 This causes a problem with the semantics of the pack/unpack "U", which
106 are supposed to pack Unicode code points to characters and back to numbers.
107 The problem is: which code points to use for code points less than 256?
108 (for 256 and over there's no problem: Unicode code points are used)
109 In EBCDIC, for the low 256 the EBCDIC code points are used. This
110 means that the equivalences
112 pack("U", ord($character)) eq $character
113 unpack("U", $character) == ord $character
115 will hold. (If Unicode code points were applied consistently over
116 all the possible code points, pack("U",ord("A")) would in EBCDIC
117 equal I<A with acute> or chr(101), and unpack("U", "A") would equal
118 65, or I<non-breaking space>, not 193, or ord "A".)
120 =head2 Remaining Perl Unicode problems in EBCDIC
126 Many of the remaining seem to be related to case-insensitive matching:
127 for example, C<< /[\x{131}]/ >> (LATIN SMALL LETTER DOTLESS I) does
128 not match "I" case-insensitively, as it should under Unicode.
129 (The match succeeds in ASCII-derived platforms.)
133 The extensions Unicode::Collate and Unicode::Normalized are not
134 supported under EBCDIC, likewise for the encoding pragma.
138 =head2 Unicode and UTF
140 UTF is a Unicode Transformation Format. UTF-8 is a Unicode conforming
141 representation of the Unicode standard that looks very much like ASCII.
142 UTF-EBCDIC is an attempt to represent Unicode characters in an EBCDIC
147 Starting from Perl 5.8 you can use the standard new module Encode
148 to translate from EBCDIC to Latin-1 code points
150 use Encode 'from_to';
152 my %ebcdic = ( 176 => 'cp37', 95 => 'cp1047', 106 => 'posix-bc' );
154 # $a is in EBCDIC code points
155 from_to($a, $ebcdic{ord '^'}, 'latin1');
156 # $a is ISO 8859-1 code points
158 and from Latin-1 code points to EBCDIC code points
160 use Encode 'from_to';
162 my %ebcdic = ( 176 => 'cp37', 95 => 'cp1047', 106 => 'posix-bc' );
164 # $a is ISO 8859-1 code points
165 from_to($a, 'latin1', $ebcdic{ord '^'});
166 # $a is in EBCDIC code points
168 For doing I/O it is suggested that you use the autotranslating features
169 of PerlIO, see L<perluniintro>.
171 =head1 SINGLE OCTET TABLES
173 The following tables list the ASCII and Latin 1 ordered sets including
174 the subsets: C0 controls (0..31), ASCII graphics (32..7e), delete (7f),
175 C1 controls (80..9f), and Latin-1 (a.k.a. ISO 8859-1) (a0..ff). In the
176 table non-printing control character names as well as the Latin 1
177 extensions to ASCII have been labelled with character names roughly
178 corresponding to I<The Unicode Standard, Version 3.0> albeit with
179 substitutions such as s/LATIN// and s/VULGAR// in all cases,
180 s/CAPITAL LETTER// in some cases, and s/SMALL LETTER ([A-Z])/\l$1/
181 in some other cases (the C<charnames> pragma names unfortunately do
182 not list explicit names for the C0 or C1 control characters). The
183 "names" of the C1 control set (128..159 in ISO 8859-1) listed here are
184 somewhat arbitrary. The differences between the 0037 and 1047 sets are
185 flagged with ***. The differences between the 1047 and POSIX-BC sets
186 are flagged with ###. All ord() numbers listed are decimal. If you
187 would rather see this table listing octal values then run the table
188 (that is, the pod version of this document since this recipe may not
189 work with a pod2_other_format translation) through:
197 perl -ne 'if(/(.{33})(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)/)' \
198 -e '{printf("%s%-9o%-9o%-9o%o\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5)}' perlebcdic.pod
200 If you want to retain the UTF-x code points then in script form you
209 open(FH,"<perlebcdic.pod") or die "Could not open perlebcdic.pod: $!";
211 if (/(.{33})(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\.?(\d*)\s+(\d+)\.?(\d*)/) {
212 if ($7 ne '' && $9 ne '') {
213 printf("%s%-9o%-9o%-9o%-9o%-3o.%-5o%-3o.%o\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7,$8,$9);
216 printf("%s%-9o%-9o%-9o%-9o%-3o.%-5o%o\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7,$8);
219 printf("%s%-9o%-9o%-9o%-9o%-9o%o\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$8);
224 If you would rather see this table listing hexadecimal values then
225 run the table through:
233 perl -ne 'if(/(.{33})(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)/)' \
234 -e '{printf("%s%-9X%-9X%-9X%X\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5)}' perlebcdic.pod
236 Or, in order to retain the UTF-x code points in hexadecimal:
244 open(FH,"<perlebcdic.pod") or die "Could not open perlebcdic.pod: $!";
246 if (/(.{33})(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\.?(\d*)\s+(\d+)\.?(\d*)/) {
247 if ($7 ne '' && $9 ne '') {
248 printf("%s%-9X%-9X%-9X%-9X%-2X.%-6X%-2X.%X\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7,$8,$9);
251 printf("%s%-9X%-9X%-9X%-9X%-2X.%-6X%X\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7,$8);
254 printf("%s%-9X%-9X%-9X%-9X%-9X%X\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$8);
262 chr 0819 0037 1047 POSIX-BC UTF-8 UTF-EBCDIC
263 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
265 <START OF HEADING> 1 1 1 1 1 1
266 <START OF TEXT> 2 2 2 2 2 2
267 <END OF TEXT> 3 3 3 3 3 3
268 <END OF TRANSMISSION> 4 55 55 55 4 55
269 <ENQUIRY> 5 45 45 45 5 45
270 <ACKNOWLEDGE> 6 46 46 46 6 46
271 <BELL> 7 47 47 47 7 47
272 <BACKSPACE> 8 22 22 22 8 22
273 <HORIZONTAL TABULATION> 9 5 5 5 9 5
274 <LINE FEED> 10 37 21 21 10 21 ***
275 <VERTICAL TABULATION> 11 11 11 11 11 11
276 <FORM FEED> 12 12 12 12 12 12
277 <CARRIAGE RETURN> 13 13 13 13 13 13
278 <SHIFT OUT> 14 14 14 14 14 14
279 <SHIFT IN> 15 15 15 15 15 15
280 <DATA LINK ESCAPE> 16 16 16 16 16 16
281 <DEVICE CONTROL ONE> 17 17 17 17 17 17
282 <DEVICE CONTROL TWO> 18 18 18 18 18 18
283 <DEVICE CONTROL THREE> 19 19 19 19 19 19
284 <DEVICE CONTROL FOUR> 20 60 60 60 20 60
285 <NEGATIVE ACKNOWLEDGE> 21 61 61 61 21 61
286 <SYNCHRONOUS IDLE> 22 50 50 50 22 50
287 <END OF TRANSMISSION BLOCK> 23 38 38 38 23 38
288 <CANCEL> 24 24 24 24 24 24
289 <END OF MEDIUM> 25 25 25 25 25 25
290 <SUBSTITUTE> 26 63 63 63 26 63
291 <ESCAPE> 27 39 39 39 27 39
292 <FILE SEPARATOR> 28 28 28 28 28 28
293 <GROUP SEPARATOR> 29 29 29 29 29 29
294 <RECORD SEPARATOR> 30 30 30 30 30 30
295 <UNIT SEPARATOR> 31 31 31 31 31 31
296 <SPACE> 32 64 64 64 32 64
298 " 34 127 127 127 34 127
299 # 35 123 123 123 35 123
301 % 37 108 108 108 37 108
303 ' 39 125 125 125 39 125
308 , 44 107 107 107 44 107
312 0 48 240 240 240 48 240
313 1 49 241 241 241 49 241
314 2 50 242 242 242 50 242
315 3 51 243 243 243 51 243
316 4 52 244 244 244 52 244
317 5 53 245 245 245 53 245
318 6 54 246 246 246 54 246
319 7 55 247 247 247 55 247
320 8 56 248 248 248 56 248
321 9 57 249 249 249 57 249
322 : 58 122 122 122 58 122
325 = 61 126 126 126 61 126
326 > 62 110 110 110 62 110
327 ? 63 111 111 111 63 111
328 @ 64 124 124 124 64 124
329 A 65 193 193 193 65 193
330 B 66 194 194 194 66 194
331 C 67 195 195 195 67 195
332 D 68 196 196 196 68 196
333 E 69 197 197 197 69 197
334 F 70 198 198 198 70 198
335 G 71 199 199 199 71 199
336 H 72 200 200 200 72 200
337 I 73 201 201 201 73 201
338 J 74 209 209 209 74 209
339 K 75 210 210 210 75 210
340 L 76 211 211 211 76 211
341 M 77 212 212 212 77 212
342 N 78 213 213 213 78 213
343 O 79 214 214 214 79 214
344 P 80 215 215 215 80 215
345 Q 81 216 216 216 81 216
346 R 82 217 217 217 82 217
347 S 83 226 226 226 83 226
348 T 84 227 227 227 84 227
349 U 85 228 228 228 85 228
350 V 86 229 229 229 86 229
351 W 87 230 230 230 87 230
352 X 88 231 231 231 88 231
353 Y 89 232 232 232 89 232
354 Z 90 233 233 233 90 233
355 [ 91 186 173 187 91 173 *** ###
356 \ 92 224 224 188 92 224 ###
357 ] 93 187 189 189 93 189 ***
358 ^ 94 176 95 106 94 95 *** ###
359 _ 95 109 109 109 95 109
360 ` 96 121 121 74 96 121 ###
361 a 97 129 129 129 97 129
362 b 98 130 130 130 98 130
363 c 99 131 131 131 99 131
364 d 100 132 132 132 100 132
365 e 101 133 133 133 101 133
366 f 102 134 134 134 102 134
367 g 103 135 135 135 103 135
368 h 104 136 136 136 104 136
369 i 105 137 137 137 105 137
370 j 106 145 145 145 106 145
371 k 107 146 146 146 107 146
372 l 108 147 147 147 108 147
373 m 109 148 148 148 109 148
374 n 110 149 149 149 110 149
375 o 111 150 150 150 111 150
376 p 112 151 151 151 112 151
377 q 113 152 152 152 113 152
378 r 114 153 153 153 114 153
379 s 115 162 162 162 115 162
380 t 116 163 163 163 116 163
381 u 117 164 164 164 117 164
382 v 118 165 165 165 118 165
383 w 119 166 166 166 119 166
384 x 120 167 167 167 120 167
385 y 121 168 168 168 121 168
386 z 122 169 169 169 122 169
387 { 123 192 192 251 123 192 ###
388 | 124 79 79 79 124 79
389 } 125 208 208 253 125 208 ###
390 ~ 126 161 161 255 126 161 ###
391 <DELETE> 127 7 7 7 127 7
392 <C1 0> 128 32 32 32 194.128 32
393 <C1 1> 129 33 33 33 194.129 33
394 <C1 2> 130 34 34 34 194.130 34
395 <C1 3> 131 35 35 35 194.131 35
396 <C1 4> 132 36 36 36 194.132 36
397 <C1 5> 133 21 37 37 194.133 37 ***
398 <C1 6> 134 6 6 6 194.134 6
399 <C1 7> 135 23 23 23 194.135 23
400 <C1 8> 136 40 40 40 194.136 40
401 <C1 9> 137 41 41 41 194.137 41
402 <C1 10> 138 42 42 42 194.138 42
403 <C1 11> 139 43 43 43 194.139 43
404 <C1 12> 140 44 44 44 194.140 44
405 <C1 13> 141 9 9 9 194.141 9
406 <C1 14> 142 10 10 10 194.142 10
407 <C1 15> 143 27 27 27 194.143 27
408 <C1 16> 144 48 48 48 194.144 48
409 <C1 17> 145 49 49 49 194.145 49
410 <C1 18> 146 26 26 26 194.146 26
411 <C1 19> 147 51 51 51 194.147 51
412 <C1 20> 148 52 52 52 194.148 52
413 <C1 21> 149 53 53 53 194.149 53
414 <C1 22> 150 54 54 54 194.150 54
415 <C1 23> 151 8 8 8 194.151 8
416 <C1 24> 152 56 56 56 194.152 56
417 <C1 25> 153 57 57 57 194.153 57
418 <C1 26> 154 58 58 58 194.154 58
419 <C1 27> 155 59 59 59 194.155 59
420 <C1 28> 156 4 4 4 194.156 4
421 <C1 29> 157 20 20 20 194.157 20
422 <C1 30> 158 62 62 62 194.158 62
423 <C1 31> 159 255 255 95 194.159 255 ###
424 <NON-BREAKING SPACE> 160 65 65 65 194.160 128.65
425 <INVERTED EXCLAMATION MARK> 161 170 170 170 194.161 128.66
426 <CENT SIGN> 162 74 74 176 194.162 128.67 ###
427 <POUND SIGN> 163 177 177 177 194.163 128.68
428 <CURRENCY SIGN> 164 159 159 159 194.164 128.69
429 <YEN SIGN> 165 178 178 178 194.165 128.70
430 <BROKEN BAR> 166 106 106 208 194.166 128.71 ###
431 <SECTION SIGN> 167 181 181 181 194.167 128.72
432 <DIAERESIS> 168 189 187 121 194.168 128.73 *** ###
433 <COPYRIGHT SIGN> 169 180 180 180 194.169 128.74
434 <FEMININE ORDINAL INDICATOR> 170 154 154 154 194.170 128.81
435 <LEFT POINTING GUILLEMET> 171 138 138 138 194.171 128.82
436 <NOT SIGN> 172 95 176 186 194.172 128.83 *** ###
437 <SOFT HYPHEN> 173 202 202 202 194.173 128.84
438 <REGISTERED TRADE MARK SIGN> 174 175 175 175 194.174 128.85
439 <MACRON> 175 188 188 161 194.175 128.86 ###
440 <DEGREE SIGN> 176 144 144 144 194.176 128.87
441 <PLUS-OR-MINUS SIGN> 177 143 143 143 194.177 128.88
442 <SUPERSCRIPT TWO> 178 234 234 234 194.178 128.89
443 <SUPERSCRIPT THREE> 179 250 250 250 194.179 128.98
444 <ACUTE ACCENT> 180 190 190 190 194.180 128.99
445 <MICRO SIGN> 181 160 160 160 194.181 128.100
446 <PARAGRAPH SIGN> 182 182 182 182 194.182 128.101
447 <MIDDLE DOT> 183 179 179 179 194.183 128.102
448 <CEDILLA> 184 157 157 157 194.184 128.103
449 <SUPERSCRIPT ONE> 185 218 218 218 194.185 128.104
450 <MASC. ORDINAL INDICATOR> 186 155 155 155 194.186 128.105
451 <RIGHT POINTING GUILLEMET> 187 139 139 139 194.187 128.106
452 <FRACTION ONE QUARTER> 188 183 183 183 194.188 128.112
453 <FRACTION ONE HALF> 189 184 184 184 194.189 128.113
454 <FRACTION THREE QUARTERS> 190 185 185 185 194.190 128.114
455 <INVERTED QUESTION MARK> 191 171 171 171 194.191 128.115
456 <A WITH GRAVE> 192 100 100 100 195.128 138.65
457 <A WITH ACUTE> 193 101 101 101 195.129 138.66
458 <A WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 194 98 98 98 195.130 138.67
459 <A WITH TILDE> 195 102 102 102 195.131 138.68
460 <A WITH DIAERESIS> 196 99 99 99 195.132 138.69
461 <A WITH RING ABOVE> 197 103 103 103 195.133 138.70
462 <CAPITAL LIGATURE AE> 198 158 158 158 195.134 138.71
463 <C WITH CEDILLA> 199 104 104 104 195.135 138.72
464 <E WITH GRAVE> 200 116 116 116 195.136 138.73
465 <E WITH ACUTE> 201 113 113 113 195.137 138.74
466 <E WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 202 114 114 114 195.138 138.81
467 <E WITH DIAERESIS> 203 115 115 115 195.139 138.82
468 <I WITH GRAVE> 204 120 120 120 195.140 138.83
469 <I WITH ACUTE> 205 117 117 117 195.141 138.84
470 <I WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 206 118 118 118 195.142 138.85
471 <I WITH DIAERESIS> 207 119 119 119 195.143 138.86
472 <CAPITAL LETTER ETH> 208 172 172 172 195.144 138.87
473 <N WITH TILDE> 209 105 105 105 195.145 138.88
474 <O WITH GRAVE> 210 237 237 237 195.146 138.89
475 <O WITH ACUTE> 211 238 238 238 195.147 138.98
476 <O WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 212 235 235 235 195.148 138.99
477 <O WITH TILDE> 213 239 239 239 195.149 138.100
478 <O WITH DIAERESIS> 214 236 236 236 195.150 138.101
479 <MULTIPLICATION SIGN> 215 191 191 191 195.151 138.102
480 <O WITH STROKE> 216 128 128 128 195.152 138.103
481 <U WITH GRAVE> 217 253 253 224 195.153 138.104 ###
482 <U WITH ACUTE> 218 254 254 254 195.154 138.105
483 <U WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 219 251 251 221 195.155 138.106 ###
484 <U WITH DIAERESIS> 220 252 252 252 195.156 138.112
485 <Y WITH ACUTE> 221 173 186 173 195.157 138.113 *** ###
486 <CAPITAL LETTER THORN> 222 174 174 174 195.158 138.114
487 <SMALL LETTER SHARP S> 223 89 89 89 195.159 138.115
488 <a WITH GRAVE> 224 68 68 68 195.160 139.65
489 <a WITH ACUTE> 225 69 69 69 195.161 139.66
490 <a WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 226 66 66 66 195.162 139.67
491 <a WITH TILDE> 227 70 70 70 195.163 139.68
492 <a WITH DIAERESIS> 228 67 67 67 195.164 139.69
493 <a WITH RING ABOVE> 229 71 71 71 195.165 139.70
494 <SMALL LIGATURE ae> 230 156 156 156 195.166 139.71
495 <c WITH CEDILLA> 231 72 72 72 195.167 139.72
496 <e WITH GRAVE> 232 84 84 84 195.168 139.73
497 <e WITH ACUTE> 233 81 81 81 195.169 139.74
498 <e WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 234 82 82 82 195.170 139.81
499 <e WITH DIAERESIS> 235 83 83 83 195.171 139.82
500 <i WITH GRAVE> 236 88 88 88 195.172 139.83
501 <i WITH ACUTE> 237 85 85 85 195.173 139.84
502 <i WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 238 86 86 86 195.174 139.85
503 <i WITH DIAERESIS> 239 87 87 87 195.175 139.86
504 <SMALL LETTER eth> 240 140 140 140 195.176 139.87
505 <n WITH TILDE> 241 73 73 73 195.177 139.88
506 <o WITH GRAVE> 242 205 205 205 195.178 139.89
507 <o WITH ACUTE> 243 206 206 206 195.179 139.98
508 <o WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 244 203 203 203 195.180 139.99
509 <o WITH TILDE> 245 207 207 207 195.181 139.100
510 <o WITH DIAERESIS> 246 204 204 204 195.182 139.101
511 <DIVISION SIGN> 247 225 225 225 195.183 139.102
512 <o WITH STROKE> 248 112 112 112 195.184 139.103
513 <u WITH GRAVE> 249 221 221 192 195.185 139.104 ###
514 <u WITH ACUTE> 250 222 222 222 195.186 139.105
515 <u WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 251 219 219 219 195.187 139.106
516 <u WITH DIAERESIS> 252 220 220 220 195.188 139.112
517 <y WITH ACUTE> 253 141 141 141 195.189 139.113
518 <SMALL LETTER thorn> 254 142 142 142 195.190 139.114
519 <y WITH DIAERESIS> 255 223 223 223 195.191 139.115
521 If you would rather see the above table in CCSID 0037 order rather than
522 ASCII + Latin-1 order then run the table through:
530 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}/)'\
532 -e 'END{print map{$_->[0]}' \
533 -e ' sort{$a->[1] <=> $b->[1]}' \
534 -e ' map{[$_,substr($_,42,3)]}@l;}' perlebcdic.pod
536 If you would rather see it in CCSID 1047 order then change the digit
537 42 in the last line to 51, like this:
545 perl -ne 'if(/.{33}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}/)'\
547 -e 'END{print map{$_->[0]}' \
548 -e ' sort{$a->[1] <=> $b->[1]}' \
549 -e ' map{[$_,substr($_,51,3)]}@l;}' perlebcdic.pod
551 If you would rather see it in POSIX-BC order then change the digit
552 51 in the last line to 60, like this:
560 perl -ne 'if(/.{33}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}/)'\
562 -e 'END{print map{$_->[0]}' \
563 -e ' sort{$a->[1] <=> $b->[1]}' \
564 -e ' map{[$_,substr($_,60,3)]}@l;}' perlebcdic.pod
567 =head1 IDENTIFYING CHARACTER CODE SETS
569 To determine the character set you are running under from perl one
570 could use the return value of ord() or chr() to test one or more
571 character values. For example:
573 $is_ascii = "A" eq chr(65);
574 $is_ebcdic = "A" eq chr(193);
576 Also, "\t" is a C<HORIZONTAL TABULATION> character so that:
578 $is_ascii = ord("\t") == 9;
579 $is_ebcdic = ord("\t") == 5;
581 To distinguish EBCDIC code pages try looking at one or more of
582 the characters that differ between them. For example:
584 $is_ebcdic_37 = "\n" eq chr(37);
585 $is_ebcdic_1047 = "\n" eq chr(21);
587 Or better still choose a character that is uniquely encoded in any
588 of the code sets, e.g.:
590 $is_ascii = ord('[') == 91;
591 $is_ebcdic_37 = ord('[') == 186;
592 $is_ebcdic_1047 = ord('[') == 173;
593 $is_ebcdic_POSIX_BC = ord('[') == 187;
595 However, it would be unwise to write tests such as:
597 $is_ascii = "\r" ne chr(13); # WRONG
598 $is_ascii = "\n" ne chr(10); # ILL ADVISED
600 Obviously the first of these will fail to distinguish most ASCII machines
601 from either a CCSID 0037, a 1047, or a POSIX-BC EBCDIC machine since "\r" eq
602 chr(13) under all of those coded character sets. But note too that
603 because "\n" is chr(13) and "\r" is chr(10) on the MacIntosh (which is an
604 ASCII machine) the second C<$is_ascii> test will lead to trouble there.
606 To determine whether or not perl was built under an EBCDIC
607 code page you can use the Config module like so:
610 $is_ebcdic = $Config{'ebcdic'} eq 'define';
616 In order to convert a string of characters from one character set to
617 another a simple list of numbers, such as in the right columns in the
618 above table, along with perl's tr/// operator is all that is needed.
619 The data in the table are in ASCII order hence the EBCDIC columns
620 provide easy to use ASCII to EBCDIC operations that are also easily
623 For example, to convert ASCII to code page 037 take the output of the second
624 column from the output of recipe 0 (modified to add \\ characters) and use
628 '\000\001\002\003\234\011\206\177\227\215\216\013\014\015\016\017' .
629 '\020\021\022\023\235\205\010\207\030\031\222\217\034\035\036\037' .
630 '\200\201\202\203\204\012\027\033\210\211\212\213\214\005\006\007' .
631 '\220\221\026\223\224\225\226\004\230\231\232\233\024\025\236\032' .
632 '\040\240\342\344\340\341\343\345\347\361\242\056\074\050\053\174' .
633 '\046\351\352\353\350\355\356\357\354\337\041\044\052\051\073\254' .
634 '\055\057\302\304\300\301\303\305\307\321\246\054\045\137\076\077' .
635 '\370\311\312\313\310\315\316\317\314\140\072\043\100\047\075\042' .
636 '\330\141\142\143\144\145\146\147\150\151\253\273\360\375\376\261' .
637 '\260\152\153\154\155\156\157\160\161\162\252\272\346\270\306\244' .
638 '\265\176\163\164\165\166\167\170\171\172\241\277\320\335\336\256' .
639 '\136\243\245\267\251\247\266\274\275\276\133\135\257\250\264\327' .
640 '\173\101\102\103\104\105\106\107\110\111\255\364\366\362\363\365' .
641 '\175\112\113\114\115\116\117\120\121\122\271\373\374\371\372\377' .
642 '\134\367\123\124\125\126\127\130\131\132\262\324\326\322\323\325' .
643 '\060\061\062\063\064\065\066\067\070\071\263\333\334\331\332\237' ;
645 my $ebcdic_string = $ascii_string;
646 eval '$ebcdic_string =~ tr/\000-\377/' . $cp_037 . '/';
648 To convert from EBCDIC 037 to ASCII just reverse the order of the tr///
651 my $ascii_string = $ebcdic_string;
652 eval '$ascii_string = tr/' . $cp_037 . '/\000-\377/';
654 Similarly one could take the output of the third column from recipe 0 to
655 obtain a C<$cp_1047> table. The fourth column of the output from recipe
656 0 could provide a C<$cp_posix_bc> table suitable for transcoding as well.
660 XPG operability often implies the presence of an I<iconv> utility
661 available from the shell or from the C library. Consult your system's
662 documentation for information on iconv.
664 On OS/390 or z/OS see the iconv(1) manpage. One way to invoke the iconv
665 shell utility from within perl would be to:
667 # OS/390 or z/OS example
668 $ascii_data = `echo '$ebcdic_data'| iconv -f IBM-1047 -t ISO8859-1`
672 # OS/390 or z/OS example
673 $ebcdic_data = `echo '$ascii_data'| iconv -f ISO8859-1 -t IBM-1047`
675 For other perl based conversion options see the Convert::* modules on CPAN.
679 The OS/390 and z/OS C run time libraries provide _atoe() and _etoa() functions.
681 =head1 OPERATOR DIFFERENCES
683 The C<..> range operator treats certain character ranges with
684 care on EBCDIC machines. For example the following array
685 will have twenty six elements on either an EBCDIC machine
688 @alphabet = ('A'..'Z'); # $#alphabet == 25
690 The bitwise operators such as & ^ | may return different results
691 when operating on string or character data in a perl program running
692 on an EBCDIC machine than when run on an ASCII machine. Here is
693 an example adapted from the one in L<perlop>:
695 # EBCDIC-based examples
696 print "j p \n" ^ " a h"; # prints "JAPH\n"
697 print "JA" | " ph\n"; # prints "japh\n"
698 print "JAPH\nJunk" & "\277\277\277\277\277"; # prints "japh\n";
699 print 'p N$' ^ " E<H\n"; # prints "Perl\n";
701 An interesting property of the 32 C0 control characters
702 in the ASCII table is that they can "literally" be constructed
703 as control characters in perl, e.g. C<(chr(0) eq "\c@")>
704 C<(chr(1) eq "\cA")>, and so on. Perl on EBCDIC machines has been
705 ported to take "\c@" to chr(0) and "\cA" to chr(1) as well, but the
706 thirty three characters that result depend on which code page you are
707 using. The table below uses the character names from the previous table
708 but with substitutions such as s/START OF/S.O./; s/END OF /E.O./;
709 s/TRANSMISSION/TRANS./; s/TABULATION/TAB./; s/VERTICAL/VERT./;
710 s/HORIZONTAL/HORIZ./; s/DEVICE CONTROL/D.C./; s/SEPARATOR/SEP./;
711 s/NEGATIVE ACKNOWLEDGE/NEG. ACK./;. The POSIX-BC and 1047 sets are
712 identical throughout this range and differ from the 0037 set at only
713 one spot (21 decimal). Note that the C<LINE FEED> character
714 may be generated by "\cJ" on ASCII machines but by "\cU" on 1047 or POSIX-BC
715 machines and cannot be generated as a C<"\c.letter."> control character on
716 0037 machines. Note also that "\c\\" maps to two characters
719 chr ord 8859-1 0037 1047 && POSIX-BC
720 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
721 "\c?" 127 <DELETE> " " ***><
722 "\c@" 0 <NULL> <NULL> <NULL> ***><
723 "\cA" 1 <S.O. HEADING> <S.O. HEADING> <S.O. HEADING>
724 "\cB" 2 <S.O. TEXT> <S.O. TEXT> <S.O. TEXT>
725 "\cC" 3 <E.O. TEXT> <E.O. TEXT> <E.O. TEXT>
726 "\cD" 4 <E.O. TRANS.> <C1 28> <C1 28>
727 "\cE" 5 <ENQUIRY> <HORIZ. TAB.> <HORIZ. TAB.>
728 "\cF" 6 <ACKNOWLEDGE> <C1 6> <C1 6>
729 "\cG" 7 <BELL> <DELETE> <DELETE>
730 "\cH" 8 <BACKSPACE> <C1 23> <C1 23>
731 "\cI" 9 <HORIZ. TAB.> <C1 13> <C1 13>
732 "\cJ" 10 <LINE FEED> <C1 14> <C1 14>
733 "\cK" 11 <VERT. TAB.> <VERT. TAB.> <VERT. TAB.>
734 "\cL" 12 <FORM FEED> <FORM FEED> <FORM FEED>
735 "\cM" 13 <CARRIAGE RETURN> <CARRIAGE RETURN> <CARRIAGE RETURN>
736 "\cN" 14 <SHIFT OUT> <SHIFT OUT> <SHIFT OUT>
737 "\cO" 15 <SHIFT IN> <SHIFT IN> <SHIFT IN>
738 "\cP" 16 <DATA LINK ESCAPE> <DATA LINK ESCAPE> <DATA LINK ESCAPE>
739 "\cQ" 17 <D.C. ONE> <D.C. ONE> <D.C. ONE>
740 "\cR" 18 <D.C. TWO> <D.C. TWO> <D.C. TWO>
741 "\cS" 19 <D.C. THREE> <D.C. THREE> <D.C. THREE>
742 "\cT" 20 <D.C. FOUR> <C1 29> <C1 29>
743 "\cU" 21 <NEG. ACK.> <C1 5> <LINE FEED> ***
744 "\cV" 22 <SYNCHRONOUS IDLE> <BACKSPACE> <BACKSPACE>
745 "\cW" 23 <E.O. TRANS. BLOCK> <C1 7> <C1 7>
746 "\cX" 24 <CANCEL> <CANCEL> <CANCEL>
747 "\cY" 25 <E.O. MEDIUM> <E.O. MEDIUM> <E.O. MEDIUM>
748 "\cZ" 26 <SUBSTITUTE> <C1 18> <C1 18>
749 "\c[" 27 <ESCAPE> <C1 15> <C1 15>
750 "\c\\" 28 <FILE SEP.>\ <FILE SEP.>\ <FILE SEP.>\
751 "\c]" 29 <GROUP SEP.> <GROUP SEP.> <GROUP SEP.>
752 "\c^" 30 <RECORD SEP.> <RECORD SEP.> <RECORD SEP.> ***><
753 "\c_" 31 <UNIT SEP.> <UNIT SEP.> <UNIT SEP.> ***><
756 =head1 FUNCTION DIFFERENCES
762 chr() must be given an EBCDIC code number argument to yield a desired
763 character return value on an EBCDIC machine. For example:
765 $CAPITAL_LETTER_A = chr(193);
769 ord() will return EBCDIC code number values on an EBCDIC machine.
772 $the_number_193 = ord("A");
776 The c and C templates for pack() are dependent upon character set
777 encoding. Examples of usage on EBCDIC include:
779 $foo = pack("CCCC",193,194,195,196);
781 $foo = pack("C4",193,194,195,196);
784 $foo = pack("ccxxcc",193,194,195,196);
789 One must be careful with scalars and strings that are passed to
790 print that contain ASCII encodings. One common place
791 for this to occur is in the output of the MIME type header for
792 CGI script writing. For example, many perl programming guides
793 recommend something similar to:
795 print "Content-type:\ttext/html\015\012\015\012";
796 # this may be wrong on EBCDIC
798 Under the IBM OS/390 USS Web Server or WebSphere on z/OS for example
799 you should instead write that as:
801 print "Content-type:\ttext/html\r\n\r\n"; # OK for DGW et alia
803 That is because the translation from EBCDIC to ASCII is done
804 by the web server in this case (such code will not be appropriate for
805 the Macintosh however). Consult your web server's documentation for
810 The formats that can convert characters to numbers and vice versa
811 will be different from their ASCII counterparts when executed
812 on an EBCDIC machine. Examples include:
814 printf("%c%c%c",193,194,195); # prints ABC
818 EBCDIC sort results may differ from ASCII sort results especially for
819 mixed case strings. This is discussed in more detail below.
823 See the discussion of printf() above. An example of the use
826 $CAPITAL_LETTER_A = sprintf("%c",193);
830 See the discussion of pack() above.
834 =head1 REGULAR EXPRESSION DIFFERENCES
836 As of perl 5.005_03 the letter range regular expression such as
837 [A-Z] and [a-z] have been especially coded to not pick up gap
838 characters. For example, characters such as E<ocirc> C<o WITH CIRCUMFLEX>
839 that lie between I and J would not be matched by the
840 regular expression range C</[H-K]/>.
842 If you do want to match the alphabet gap characters in a single octet
843 regular expression try matching the hex or octal code such
844 as C</\313/> on EBCDIC or C</\364/> on ASCII machines to
845 have your regular expression match C<o WITH CIRCUMFLEX>.
847 Another construct to be wary of is the inappropriate use of hex or
848 octal constants in regular expressions. Consider the following
852 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
853 $char =~ /[\000-\037]/;
857 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
858 $char =~ /[\040-\176]/;
862 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
867 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
868 $char =~ /[\200-\237]/;
872 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
873 $char =~ /[\240-\377]/;
876 The above would be adequate if the concern was only with numeric code points.
877 However, the concern may be with characters rather than code points
878 and on an EBCDIC machine it may be desirable for constructs such as
879 C<if (is_print_ascii("A")) {print "A is a printable character\n";}> to print
880 out the expected message. One way to represent the above collection
881 of character classification subs that is capable of working across the
882 four coded character sets discussed in this document is as follows:
885 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
886 if (ord('^')==94) { # ascii
887 return $char =~ /[\000-\037]/;
889 if (ord('^')==176) { # 37
890 return $char =~ /[\000-\003\067\055-\057\026\005\045\013-\023\074\075\062\046\030\031\077\047\034-\037]/;
892 if (ord('^')==95 || ord('^')==106) { # 1047 || posix-bc
893 return $char =~ /[\000-\003\067\055-\057\026\005\025\013-\023\074\075\062\046\030\031\077\047\034-\037]/;
898 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
899 $char =~ /[ !"\#\$%&'()*+,\-.\/0-9:;<=>?\@A-Z[\\\]^_`a-z{|}~]/;
903 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
904 if (ord('^')==94) { # ascii
905 return $char eq "\177";
908 return $char eq "\007";
913 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
914 if (ord('^')==94) { # ascii
915 return $char =~ /[\200-\237]/;
917 if (ord('^')==176) { # 37
918 return $char =~ /[\040-\044\025\006\027\050-\054\011\012\033\060\061\032\063-\066\010\070-\073\040\024\076\377]/;
920 if (ord('^')==95) { # 1047
921 return $char =~ /[\040-\045\006\027\050-\054\011\012\033\060\061\032\063-\066\010\070-\073\040\024\076\377]/;
923 if (ord('^')==106) { # posix-bc
925 /[\040-\045\006\027\050-\054\011\012\033\060\061\032\063-\066\010\070-\073\040\024\076\137]/;
930 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
931 if (ord('^')==94) { # ascii
932 return $char =~ /[\240-\377]/;
934 if (ord('^')==176) { # 37
936 /[\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]/;
938 if (ord('^')==95) { # 1047
940 /[\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]/;
942 if (ord('^')==106) { # posix-bc
944 /[\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]/;
948 Note however that only the C<Is_ascii_print()> sub is really independent
949 of coded character set. Another way to write C<Is_latin_1()> would be
950 to use the characters in the range explicitly:
953 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
954 $char =~ /[ ¡¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª«¬®¯°±²³´µ¶·¸¹º»¼½¾¿ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõö÷øùúûüýþÿ]/;
957 Although that form may run into trouble in network transit (due to the
958 presence of 8 bit characters) or on non ISO-Latin character sets.
962 Most socket programming assumes ASCII character encodings in network
963 byte order. Exceptions can include CGI script writing under a
964 host web server where the server may take care of translation for you.
965 Most host web servers convert EBCDIC data to ISO-8859-1 or Unicode on
970 One big difference between ASCII based character sets and EBCDIC ones
971 are the relative positions of upper and lower case letters and the
972 letters compared to the digits. If sorted on an ASCII based machine the
973 two letter abbreviation for a physician comes before the two letter
976 @sorted = sort(qw(Dr. dr.)); # @sorted holds ('Dr.','dr.') on ASCII,
977 # but ('dr.','Dr.') on EBCDIC
979 The property of lower case before uppercase letters in EBCDIC is
980 even carried to the Latin 1 EBCDIC pages such as 0037 and 1047.
981 An example would be that E<Euml> C<E WITH DIAERESIS> (203) comes
982 before E<euml> C<e WITH DIAERESIS> (235) on an ASCII machine, but
983 the latter (83) comes before the former (115) on an EBCDIC machine.
984 (Astute readers will note that the upper case version of E<szlig>
985 C<SMALL LETTER SHARP S> is simply "SS" and that the upper case version of
986 E<yuml> C<y WITH DIAERESIS> is not in the 0..255 range but it is
987 at U+x0178 in Unicode, or C<"\x{178}"> in a Unicode enabled Perl).
989 The sort order will cause differences between results obtained on
990 ASCII machines versus EBCDIC machines. What follows are some suggestions
991 on how to deal with these differences.
993 =head2 Ignore ASCII vs. EBCDIC sort differences.
995 This is the least computationally expensive strategy. It may require
998 =head2 MONO CASE then sort data.
1000 In order to minimize the expense of mono casing mixed test try to
1001 C<tr///> towards the character set case most employed within the data.
1002 If the data are primarily UPPERCASE non Latin 1 then apply tr/[a-z]/[A-Z]/
1003 then sort(). If the data are primarily lowercase non Latin 1 then
1004 apply tr/[A-Z]/[a-z]/ before sorting. If the data are primarily UPPERCASE
1005 and include Latin-1 characters then apply:
1008 tr/[àáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõöøùúûüýþ]/[ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖØÙÚÛÜÝÞ]/;
1011 then sort(). Do note however that such Latin-1 manipulation does not
1012 address the E<yuml> C<y WITH DIAERESIS> character that will remain at
1013 code point 255 on ASCII machines, but 223 on most EBCDIC machines
1014 where it will sort to a place less than the EBCDIC numerals. With a
1015 Unicode enabled Perl you might try:
1019 The strategy of mono casing data before sorting does not preserve the case
1020 of the data and may not be acceptable for that reason.
1022 =head2 Convert, sort data, then re convert.
1024 This is the most expensive proposition that does not employ a network
1027 =head2 Perform sorting on one type of machine only.
1029 This strategy can employ a network connection. As such
1030 it would be computationally expensive.
1032 =head1 TRANSFORMATION FORMATS
1034 There are a variety of ways of transforming data with an intra character set
1035 mapping that serve a variety of purposes. Sorting was discussed in the
1036 previous section and a few of the other more popular mapping techniques are
1039 =head2 URL decoding and encoding
1041 Note that some URLs have hexadecimal ASCII code points in them in an
1042 attempt to overcome character or protocol limitation issues. For example
1043 the tilde character is not on every keyboard hence a URL of the form:
1045 http://www.pvhp.com/~pvhp/
1047 may also be expressed as either of:
1049 http://www.pvhp.com/%7Epvhp/
1051 http://www.pvhp.com/%7epvhp/
1053 where 7E is the hexadecimal ASCII code point for '~'. Here is an example
1054 of decoding such a URL under CCSID 1047:
1056 $url = 'http://www.pvhp.com/%7Epvhp/';
1057 # this array assumes code page 1047
1059 0, 1, 2, 3, 55, 45, 46, 47, 22, 5, 21, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,
1060 16, 17, 18, 19, 60, 61, 50, 38, 24, 25, 63, 39, 28, 29, 30, 31,
1061 64, 90,127,123, 91,108, 80,125, 77, 93, 92, 78,107, 96, 75, 97,
1062 240,241,242,243,244,245,246,247,248,249,122, 94, 76,126,110,111,
1063 124,193,194,195,196,197,198,199,200,201,209,210,211,212,213,214,
1064 215,216,217,226,227,228,229,230,231,232,233,173,224,189, 95,109,
1065 121,129,130,131,132,133,134,135,136,137,145,146,147,148,149,150,
1066 151,152,153,162,163,164,165,166,167,168,169,192, 79,208,161, 7,
1067 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 6, 23, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 9, 10, 27,
1068 48, 49, 26, 51, 52, 53, 54, 8, 56, 57, 58, 59, 4, 20, 62,255,
1069 65,170, 74,177,159,178,106,181,187,180,154,138,176,202,175,188,
1070 144,143,234,250,190,160,182,179,157,218,155,139,183,184,185,171,
1071 100,101, 98,102, 99,103,158,104,116,113,114,115,120,117,118,119,
1072 172,105,237,238,235,239,236,191,128,253,254,251,252,186,174, 89,
1073 68, 69, 66, 70, 67, 71,156, 72, 84, 81, 82, 83, 88, 85, 86, 87,
1074 140, 73,205,206,203,207,204,225,112,221,222,219,220,141,142,223
1076 $url =~ s/%([0-9a-fA-F]{2})/pack("c",$a2e_1047[hex($1)])/ge;
1078 Conversely, here is a partial solution for the task of encoding such
1079 a URL under the 1047 code page:
1081 $url = 'http://www.pvhp.com/~pvhp/';
1082 # this array assumes code page 1047
1084 0, 1, 2, 3,156, 9,134,127,151,141,142, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,
1085 16, 17, 18, 19,157, 10, 8,135, 24, 25,146,143, 28, 29, 30, 31,
1086 128,129,130,131,132,133, 23, 27,136,137,138,139,140, 5, 6, 7,
1087 144,145, 22,147,148,149,150, 4,152,153,154,155, 20, 21,158, 26,
1088 32,160,226,228,224,225,227,229,231,241,162, 46, 60, 40, 43,124,
1089 38,233,234,235,232,237,238,239,236,223, 33, 36, 42, 41, 59, 94,
1090 45, 47,194,196,192,193,195,197,199,209,166, 44, 37, 95, 62, 63,
1091 248,201,202,203,200,205,206,207,204, 96, 58, 35, 64, 39, 61, 34,
1092 216, 97, 98, 99,100,101,102,103,104,105,171,187,240,253,254,177,
1093 176,106,107,108,109,110,111,112,113,114,170,186,230,184,198,164,
1094 181,126,115,116,117,118,119,120,121,122,161,191,208, 91,222,174,
1095 172,163,165,183,169,167,182,188,189,190,221,168,175, 93,180,215,
1096 123, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73,173,244,246,242,243,245,
1097 125, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82,185,251,252,249,250,255,
1098 92,247, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90,178,212,214,210,211,213,
1099 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57,179,219,220,217,218,159
1101 # The following regular expression does not address the
1102 # mappings for: ('.' => '%2E', '/' => '%2F', ':' => '%3A')
1103 $url =~ s/([\t "#%&\(\),;<=>\?\@\[\\\]^`{|}~])/sprintf("%%%02X",$e2a_1047[ord($1)])/ge;
1105 where a more complete solution would split the URL into components
1106 and apply a full s/// substitution only to the appropriate parts.
1108 In the remaining examples a @e2a or @a2e array may be employed
1109 but the assignment will not be shown explicitly. For code page 1047
1110 you could use the @a2e_1047 or @e2a_1047 arrays just shown.
1112 =head2 uu encoding and decoding
1114 The C<u> template to pack() or unpack() will render EBCDIC data in EBCDIC
1115 characters equivalent to their ASCII counterparts. For example, the
1116 following will print "Yes indeed\n" on either an ASCII or EBCDIC computer:
1118 $all_byte_chrs = '';
1119 for (0..255) { $all_byte_chrs .= chr($_); }
1120 $uuencode_byte_chrs = pack('u', $all_byte_chrs);
1121 ($uu = <<'ENDOFHEREDOC') =~ s/^\s*//gm;
1122 M``$"`P0%!@<("0H+#`T.#Q`1$A,4%187&!D:&QP='A\@(2(C)"4F)R@I*BLL
1123 M+2XO,#$R,S0U-C<X.3H[/#T^/T!!0D-$149'2$E*2TQ-3D]045)35%565UA9
1124 M6EM<75Y?8&%B8V1E9F=H:6IK;&UN;W!Q<G-T=79W>'EZ>WQ]?G^`@8*#A(6&
1125 MAXB)BHN,C8Z/D)&2DY25EI>8F9J;G)V>GZ"AHJ.DI::GJ*FJJZRMKJ^PL;*S
1126 MM+6VM[BYNKN\O;Z_P,'"P\3%QL?(R<K+S,W.S]#1TM/4U=;7V-G:V]S=WM_@
1127 ?X>+CY.7FY^CIZNOL[>[O\/'R\_3U]O?X^?K[_/W^_P``
1129 if ($uuencode_byte_chrs eq $uu) {
1132 $uudecode_byte_chrs = unpack('u', $uuencode_byte_chrs);
1133 if ($uudecode_byte_chrs eq $all_byte_chrs) {
1137 Here is a very spartan uudecoder that will work on EBCDIC provided
1138 that the @e2a array is filled in appropriately:
1140 #!/usr/local/bin/perl
1141 @e2a = ( # this must be filled in
1143 $_ = <> until ($mode,$file) = /^begin\s*(\d*)\s*(\S*)/;
1144 open(OUT, "> $file") if $file ne "";
1148 next unless int(((($e2a[ord()] - 32 ) & 077) + 2) / 3) ==
1150 print OUT unpack("u", $_);
1153 chmod oct($mode), $file;
1156 =head2 Quoted-Printable encoding and decoding
1158 On ASCII encoded machines it is possible to strip characters outside of
1159 the printable set using:
1161 # This QP encoder works on ASCII only
1162 $qp_string =~ s/([=\x00-\x1F\x80-\xFF])/sprintf("=%02X",ord($1))/ge;
1164 Whereas a QP encoder that works on both ASCII and EBCDIC machines
1165 would look somewhat like the following (where the EBCDIC branch @e2a
1166 array is omitted for brevity):
1168 if (ord('A') == 65) { # ASCII
1169 $delete = "\x7F"; # ASCII
1170 @e2a = (0 .. 255) # ASCII to ASCII identity map
1173 $delete = "\x07"; # EBCDIC
1174 @e2a = # EBCDIC to ASCII map (as shown above)
1177 s/([^ !"\#\$%&'()*+,\-.\/0-9:;<>?\@A-Z[\\\]^_`a-z{|}~$delete])/sprintf("=%02X",$e2a[ord($1)])/ge;
1179 (although in production code the substitutions might be done
1180 in the EBCDIC branch with the @e2a array and separately in the
1181 ASCII branch without the expense of the identity map).
1183 Such QP strings can be decoded with:
1185 # This QP decoder is limited to ASCII only
1186 $string =~ s/=([0-9A-Fa-f][0-9A-Fa-f])/chr hex $1/ge;
1187 $string =~ s/=[\n\r]+$//;
1189 Whereas a QP decoder that works on both ASCII and EBCDIC machines
1190 would look somewhat like the following (where the @a2e array is
1191 omitted for brevity):
1193 $string =~ s/=([0-9A-Fa-f][0-9A-Fa-f])/chr $a2e[hex $1]/ge;
1194 $string =~ s/=[\n\r]+$//;
1196 =head2 Caesarian ciphers
1198 The practice of shifting an alphabet one or more characters for encipherment
1199 dates back thousands of years and was explicitly detailed by Gaius Julius
1200 Caesar in his B<Gallic Wars> text. A single alphabet shift is sometimes
1201 referred to as a rotation and the shift amount is given as a number $n after
1202 the string 'rot' or "rot$n". Rot0 and rot26 would designate identity maps
1203 on the 26 letter English version of the Latin alphabet. Rot13 has the
1204 interesting property that alternate subsequent invocations are identity maps
1205 (thus rot13 is its own non-trivial inverse in the group of 26 alphabet
1206 rotations). Hence the following is a rot13 encoder and decoder that will
1207 work on ASCII and EBCDIC machines:
1209 #!/usr/local/bin/perl
1212 tr/n-za-mN-ZA-M/a-zA-Z/;
1218 perl -ne 'tr/n-za-mN-ZA-M/a-zA-Z/;print'
1221 =head1 Hashing order and checksums
1223 To the extent that it is possible to write code that depends on
1224 hashing order there may be differences between hashes as stored
1225 on an ASCII based machine and hashes stored on an EBCDIC based machine.
1228 =head1 I18N AND L10N
1230 Internationalization(I18N) and localization(L10N) are supported at least
1231 in principle even on EBCDIC machines. The details are system dependent
1232 and discussed under the L<perlebcdic/OS ISSUES> section below.
1234 =head1 MULTI OCTET CHARACTER SETS
1236 Perl may work with an internal UTF-EBCDIC encoding form for wide characters
1237 on EBCDIC platforms in a manner analogous to the way that it works with
1238 the UTF-8 internal encoding form on ASCII based platforms.
1240 Legacy multi byte EBCDIC code pages XXX.
1244 There may be a few system dependent issues
1245 of concern to EBCDIC Perl programmers.
1249 The PASE environment.
1261 Perl runs under Unix Systems Services or USS.
1267 B<chcp> is supported as a shell utility for displaying and changing
1268 one's code page. See also L<chcp>.
1270 =item dataset access
1272 For sequential data set access try:
1274 my @ds_records = `cat //DSNAME`;
1278 my @ds_records = `cat //'HLQ.DSNAME'`;
1280 See also the OS390::Stdio module on CPAN.
1282 =item OS/390, z/OS iconv
1284 B<iconv> is supported as both a shell utility and a C RTL routine.
1285 See also the iconv(1) and iconv(3) manual pages.
1289 On OS/390 or z/OS see L<locale> for information on locales. The L10N files
1290 are in F</usr/nls/locale>. $Config{d_setlocale} is 'define' on OS/390
1305 This pod document contains literal Latin 1 characters and may encounter
1306 translation difficulties. In particular one popular nroff implementation
1307 was known to strip accented characters to their unaccented counterparts
1308 while attempting to view this document through the B<pod2man> program
1309 (for example, you may see a plain C<y> rather than one with a diaeresis
1310 as in E<yuml>). Another nroff truncated the resultant manpage at
1311 the first occurrence of 8 bit characters.
1313 Not all shells will allow multiple C<-e> string arguments to perl to
1314 be concatenated together properly as recipes 0, 2, 4, 5, and 6 might
1319 L<perllocale>, L<perlfunc>, L<perlunicode>, L<utf8>.
1323 http://anubis.dkuug.dk/i18n/charmaps
1325 http://www.unicode.org/
1327 http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr16/
1329 http://www.wps.com/texts/codes/
1330 B<ASCII: American Standard Code for Information Infiltration> Tom Jennings,
1333 B<The Unicode Standard, Version 3.0> The Unicode Consortium, Lisa Moore ed.,
1334 ISBN 0-201-61633-5, Addison Wesley Developers Press, February 2000.
1336 B<CDRA: IBM - Character Data Representation Architecture -
1337 Reference and Registry>, IBM SC09-2190-00, December 1996.
1339 "Demystifying Character Sets", Andrea Vine, Multilingual Computing
1340 & Technology, B<#26 Vol. 10 Issue 4>, August/September 1999;
1341 ISSN 1523-0309; Multilingual Computing Inc. Sandpoint ID, USA.
1343 B<Codes, Ciphers, and Other Cryptic and Clandestine Communication>
1344 Fred B. Wrixon, ISBN 1-57912-040-7, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers,
1347 http://www.bobbemer.com/P-BIT.HTM
1348 B<IBM - EBCDIC and the P-bit; The biggest Computer Goof Ever> Robert Bemer.
1352 15 April 2001: added UTF-8 and UTF-EBCDIC to main table, pvhp.
1356 Peter Prymmer pvhp@best.com wrote this in 1999 and 2000
1357 with CCSID 0819 and 0037 help from Chris Leach and
1358 AndrE<eacute> Pirard A.Pirard@ulg.ac.be as well as POSIX-BC
1359 help from Thomas Dorner Thomas.Dorner@start.de.
1360 Thanks also to Vickie Cooper, Philip Newton, William Raffloer, and
1361 Joe Smith. Trademarks, registered trademarks, service marks and
1362 registered service marks used in this document are the property of
1363 their respective owners.