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 Perl used to work on EBCDIC machines, but there are now areas of the code where
15 it doesn't. If you want to use Perl on an EBCDIC machine, please let us know
16 by sending mail to perlbug@perl.org
18 =head1 COMMON CHARACTER CODE SETS
22 The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII or US-ASCII) is a
24 integers running from 0 to 127 (decimal) that imply character
25 interpretation by the display and other systems of computers.
26 The range 0..127 can be covered by setting the bits in a 7-bit binary
27 digit, hence the set is sometimes referred to as a "7-bit ASCII".
28 ASCII was described by the American National Standards Institute
29 document ANSI X3.4-1986. It was also described by ISO 646:1991
30 (with localization for currency symbols). The full ASCII set is
31 given in the table below as the first 128 elements. Languages that
32 can be written adequately with the characters in ASCII include
33 English, Hawaiian, Indonesian, Swahili and some Native American
36 There are many character sets that extend the range of integers
37 from 0..2**7-1 up to 2**8-1, or 8 bit bytes (octets if you prefer).
38 One common one is the ISO 8859-1 character set.
42 The ISO 8859-$n are a collection of character code sets from the
43 International Organization for Standardization (ISO) each of which
44 adds characters to the ASCII set that are typically found in European
45 languages many of which are based on the Roman, or Latin, alphabet.
47 =head2 Latin 1 (ISO 8859-1)
49 A particular 8-bit extension to ASCII that includes grave and acute
50 accented Latin characters. Languages that can employ ISO 8859-1
51 include all the languages covered by ASCII as well as Afrikaans,
52 Albanian, Basque, Catalan, Danish, Faroese, Finnish, Norwegian,
53 Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. Dutch is covered albeit without
54 the ij ligature. French is covered too but without the oe ligature.
55 German can use ISO 8859-1 but must do so without German-style
56 quotation marks. This set is based on Western European extensions
57 to ASCII and is commonly encountered in world wide web work.
58 In IBM character code set identification terminology ISO 8859-1 is
59 also known as CCSID 819 (or sometimes 0819 or even 00819).
63 The Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code refers to a
64 large collection of single and multi byte coded character sets that are
65 different from ASCII or ISO 8859-1 and are all slightly different from each
66 other; they typically run on host computers. The EBCDIC encodings derive from
67 8 bit byte extensions of Hollerith punched card encodings. The layout on the
68 cards was such that high bits were set for the upper and lower case alphabet
69 characters [a-z] and [A-Z], but there were gaps within each Latin alphabet
72 Some IBM EBCDIC character sets may be known by character code set
73 identification numbers (CCSID numbers) or code page numbers.
75 Perl can be compiled on platforms that run any of three commonly used EBCDIC
76 character sets, listed below.
78 =head2 The 13 variant characters
80 Among IBM EBCDIC character code sets there are 13 characters that
81 are often mapped to different integer values. Those characters
82 are known as the 13 "variant" characters and are:
84 \ [ ] { } ^ ~ ! # | $ @ `
86 When Perl is compiled for a platform, it looks at some of these characters to
87 guess which EBCDIC character set the platform uses, and adapts itself
88 accordingly to that platform. If the platform uses a character set that is not
89 one of the three Perl knows about, Perl will either fail to compile, or
90 mistakenly and silently choose one of the three.
95 Character code set ID 0037 is a mapping of the ASCII plus Latin-1
96 characters (i.e. ISO 8859-1) to an EBCDIC set. 0037 is used
97 in North American English locales on the OS/400 operating system
98 that runs on AS/400 computers. CCSID 0037 differs from ISO 8859-1
99 in 237 places, in other words they agree on only 19 code point values.
103 Character code set ID 1047 is also a mapping of the ASCII plus
104 Latin-1 characters (i.e. ISO 8859-1) to an EBCDIC set. 1047 is
105 used under Unix System Services for OS/390 or z/OS, and OpenEdition
106 for VM/ESA. CCSID 1047 differs from CCSID 0037 in eight places.
110 The EBCDIC code page in use on Siemens' BS2000 system is distinct from
111 1047 and 0037. It is identified below as the POSIX-BC set.
113 =head2 Unicode code points versus EBCDIC code points
115 In Unicode terminology a I<code point> is the number assigned to a
116 character: for example, in EBCDIC the character "A" is usually assigned
117 the number 193. In Unicode the character "A" is assigned the number 65.
118 This causes a problem with the semantics of the pack/unpack "U", which
119 are supposed to pack Unicode code points to characters and back to numbers.
120 The problem is: which code points to use for code points less than 256?
121 (for 256 and over there's no problem: Unicode code points are used)
122 In EBCDIC, for the low 256 the EBCDIC code points are used. This
123 means that the equivalences
125 pack("U", ord($character)) eq $character
126 unpack("U", $character) == ord $character
128 will hold. (If Unicode code points were applied consistently over
129 all the possible code points, pack("U",ord("A")) would in EBCDIC
130 equal I<A with acute> or chr(101), and unpack("U", "A") would equal
131 65, or I<non-breaking space>, not 193, or ord "A".)
133 =head2 Remaining Perl Unicode problems in EBCDIC
139 Many of the remaining problems seem to be related to case-insensitive matching
143 The extensions Unicode::Collate and Unicode::Normalized are not
144 supported under EBCDIC, likewise for the encoding pragma.
148 =head2 Unicode and UTF
150 UTF stands for C<Unicode Transformation Format>.
151 UTF-8 is an encoding of Unicode into a sequence of 8-bit byte chunks, based on
153 The length of a sequence required to represent a Unicode code point
154 depends on the ordinal number of that code point,
155 with larger numbers requiring more bytes.
156 UTF-EBCDIC is like UTF-8, but based on EBCDIC.
158 You may see the term C<invariant> character or code point.
159 This simply means that the character has the same numeric
160 value when encoded as when not.
161 (Note that this is a very different concept from L</The 13 variant characters>
163 For example, the ordinal value of 'A' is 193 in most EBCDIC code pages,
164 and also is 193 when encoded in UTF-EBCDIC.
165 All variant code points occupy at least two bytes when encoded.
166 In UTF-8, the code points corresponding to the lowest 128
167 ordinal numbers (0 - 127: the ASCII characters) are invariant.
168 In UTF-EBCDIC, there are 160 invariant characters.
169 (If you care, the EBCDIC invariants are those characters
170 which have ASCII equivalents, plus those that correspond to
171 the C1 controls (80..9f on ASCII platforms).)
173 A string encoded in UTF-EBCDIC may be longer (but never shorter) than
174 one encoded in UTF-8.
178 Starting from Perl 5.8 you can use the standard new module Encode
179 to translate from EBCDIC to Latin-1 code points.
180 Encode knows about more EBCDIC character sets than Perl can currently
181 be compiled to run on.
183 use Encode 'from_to';
185 my %ebcdic = ( 176 => 'cp37', 95 => 'cp1047', 106 => 'posix-bc' );
187 # $a is in EBCDIC code points
188 from_to($a, $ebcdic{ord '^'}, 'latin1');
189 # $a is ISO 8859-1 code points
191 and from Latin-1 code points to EBCDIC code points
193 use Encode 'from_to';
195 my %ebcdic = ( 176 => 'cp37', 95 => 'cp1047', 106 => 'posix-bc' );
197 # $a is ISO 8859-1 code points
198 from_to($a, 'latin1', $ebcdic{ord '^'});
199 # $a is in EBCDIC code points
201 For doing I/O it is suggested that you use the autotranslating features
202 of PerlIO, see L<perluniintro>.
204 Since version 5.8 Perl uses the new PerlIO I/O library. This enables
205 you to use different encodings per IO channel. For example you may use
208 open($f, ">:encoding(ascii)", "test.ascii");
209 print $f "Hello World!\n";
210 open($f, ">:encoding(cp37)", "test.ebcdic");
211 print $f "Hello World!\n";
212 open($f, ">:encoding(latin1)", "test.latin1");
213 print $f "Hello World!\n";
214 open($f, ">:encoding(utf8)", "test.utf8");
215 print $f "Hello World!\n";
217 to get four files containing "Hello World!\n" in ASCII, CP 0037 EBCDIC,
218 ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) (in this example identical to ASCII since only ASCII
219 characters were printed), and
220 UTF-EBCDIC (in this example identical to normal EBCDIC since only characters
221 that don't differ between EBCDIC and UTF-EBCDIC were printed). See the
222 documentation of Encode::PerlIO for details.
224 As the PerlIO layer uses raw IO (bytes) internally, all this totally
225 ignores things like the type of your filesystem (ASCII or EBCDIC).
227 =head1 SINGLE OCTET TABLES
229 The following tables list the ASCII and Latin 1 ordered sets including
230 the subsets: C0 controls (0..31), ASCII graphics (32..7e), delete (7f),
231 C1 controls (80..9f), and Latin-1 (a.k.a. ISO 8859-1) (a0..ff). In the
232 table non-printing control character names as well as the Latin 1
233 extensions to ASCII have been labelled with character names roughly
234 corresponding to I<The Unicode Standard, Version 3.0> albeit with
235 substitutions such as s/LATIN// and s/VULGAR// in all cases,
236 s/CAPITAL LETTER// in some cases, and s/SMALL LETTER ([A-Z])/\l$1/
237 in some other cases. The "names" of the controls listed here are
238 the Unicode Version 1 names, except for the few that don't have names, in which
239 case the names in the Wikipedia article were used
240 (L<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C0_and_C1_control_codes>.
241 The differences between the 0037 and 1047 sets are
242 flagged with ***. The differences between the 1047 and POSIX-BC sets
243 are flagged with ###. All ord() numbers listed are decimal. If you
244 would rather see this table listing octal values then run the table
245 (that is, the pod version of this document since this recipe may not
246 work with a pod2_other_format translation) through:
254 perl -ne 'if(/(.{43})(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)/)' \
255 -e '{printf("%s%-9o%-9o%-9o%o\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5)}' perlebcdic.pod
257 If you want to retain the UTF-x code points then in script form you
266 open(FH,"<perlebcdic.pod") or die "Could not open perlebcdic.pod: $!";
268 if (/(.{43})(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\.?(\d*)\s+(\d+)\.?(\d*)/) {
269 if ($7 ne '' && $9 ne '') {
270 printf("%s%-9o%-9o%-9o%-9o%-3o.%-5o%-3o.%o\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7,$8,$9);
273 printf("%s%-9o%-9o%-9o%-9o%-3o.%-5o%o\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7,$8);
276 printf("%s%-9o%-9o%-9o%-9o%-9o%o\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$8);
281 If you would rather see this table listing hexadecimal values then
282 run the table through:
290 perl -ne 'if(/(.{43})(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)/)' \
291 -e '{printf("%s%-9X%-9X%-9X%X\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5)}' perlebcdic.pod
293 Or, in order to retain the UTF-x code points in hexadecimal:
301 open(FH,"<perlebcdic.pod") or die "Could not open perlebcdic.pod: $!";
303 if (/(.{43})(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\.?(\d*)\s+(\d+)\.?(\d*)/) {
304 if ($7 ne '' && $9 ne '') {
305 printf("%s%-9X%-9X%-9X%-9X%-2X.%-6X%-2X.%X\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7,$8,$9);
308 printf("%s%-9X%-9X%-9X%-9X%-2X.%-6X%X\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$7,$8);
311 printf("%s%-9X%-9X%-9X%-9X%-9X%X\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6,$8);
317 ISO 8859-1 CCSID CCSID CCSID 1047
318 chr CCSID 0819 0037 1047 POSIX-BC UTF-8 UTF-EBCDIC
319 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
321 <START OF HEADING> 1 1 1 1 1 1
322 <START OF TEXT> 2 2 2 2 2 2
323 <END OF TEXT> 3 3 3 3 3 3
324 <END OF TRANSMISSION> 4 55 55 55 4 55
325 <ENQUIRY> 5 45 45 45 5 45
326 <ACKNOWLEDGE> 6 46 46 46 6 46
327 <BELL> 7 47 47 47 7 47
328 <BACKSPACE> 8 22 22 22 8 22
329 <HORIZONTAL TABULATION> 9 5 5 5 9 5
330 <LINE FEED> 10 37 21 21 10 21 ***
331 <VERTICAL TABULATION> 11 11 11 11 11 11
332 <FORM FEED> 12 12 12 12 12 12
333 <CARRIAGE RETURN> 13 13 13 13 13 13
334 <SHIFT OUT> 14 14 14 14 14 14
335 <SHIFT IN> 15 15 15 15 15 15
336 <DATA LINK ESCAPE> 16 16 16 16 16 16
337 <DEVICE CONTROL ONE> 17 17 17 17 17 17
338 <DEVICE CONTROL TWO> 18 18 18 18 18 18
339 <DEVICE CONTROL THREE> 19 19 19 19 19 19
340 <DEVICE CONTROL FOUR> 20 60 60 60 20 60
341 <NEGATIVE ACKNOWLEDGE> 21 61 61 61 21 61
342 <SYNCHRONOUS IDLE> 22 50 50 50 22 50
343 <END OF TRANSMISSION BLOCK> 23 38 38 38 23 38
344 <CANCEL> 24 24 24 24 24 24
345 <END OF MEDIUM> 25 25 25 25 25 25
346 <SUBSTITUTE> 26 63 63 63 26 63
347 <ESCAPE> 27 39 39 39 27 39
348 <FILE SEPARATOR> 28 28 28 28 28 28
349 <GROUP SEPARATOR> 29 29 29 29 29 29
350 <RECORD SEPARATOR> 30 30 30 30 30 30
351 <UNIT SEPARATOR> 31 31 31 31 31 31
352 <SPACE> 32 64 64 64 32 64
354 " 34 127 127 127 34 127
355 # 35 123 123 123 35 123
357 % 37 108 108 108 37 108
359 ' 39 125 125 125 39 125
364 , 44 107 107 107 44 107
368 0 48 240 240 240 48 240
369 1 49 241 241 241 49 241
370 2 50 242 242 242 50 242
371 3 51 243 243 243 51 243
372 4 52 244 244 244 52 244
373 5 53 245 245 245 53 245
374 6 54 246 246 246 54 246
375 7 55 247 247 247 55 247
376 8 56 248 248 248 56 248
377 9 57 249 249 249 57 249
378 : 58 122 122 122 58 122
381 = 61 126 126 126 61 126
382 > 62 110 110 110 62 110
383 ? 63 111 111 111 63 111
384 @ 64 124 124 124 64 124
385 A 65 193 193 193 65 193
386 B 66 194 194 194 66 194
387 C 67 195 195 195 67 195
388 D 68 196 196 196 68 196
389 E 69 197 197 197 69 197
390 F 70 198 198 198 70 198
391 G 71 199 199 199 71 199
392 H 72 200 200 200 72 200
393 I 73 201 201 201 73 201
394 J 74 209 209 209 74 209
395 K 75 210 210 210 75 210
396 L 76 211 211 211 76 211
397 M 77 212 212 212 77 212
398 N 78 213 213 213 78 213
399 O 79 214 214 214 79 214
400 P 80 215 215 215 80 215
401 Q 81 216 216 216 81 216
402 R 82 217 217 217 82 217
403 S 83 226 226 226 83 226
404 T 84 227 227 227 84 227
405 U 85 228 228 228 85 228
406 V 86 229 229 229 86 229
407 W 87 230 230 230 87 230
408 X 88 231 231 231 88 231
409 Y 89 232 232 232 89 232
410 Z 90 233 233 233 90 233
411 [ 91 186 173 187 91 173 *** ###
412 \ 92 224 224 188 92 224 ###
413 ] 93 187 189 189 93 189 ***
414 ^ 94 176 95 106 94 95 *** ###
415 _ 95 109 109 109 95 109
416 ` 96 121 121 74 96 121 ###
417 a 97 129 129 129 97 129
418 b 98 130 130 130 98 130
419 c 99 131 131 131 99 131
420 d 100 132 132 132 100 132
421 e 101 133 133 133 101 133
422 f 102 134 134 134 102 134
423 g 103 135 135 135 103 135
424 h 104 136 136 136 104 136
425 i 105 137 137 137 105 137
426 j 106 145 145 145 106 145
427 k 107 146 146 146 107 146
428 l 108 147 147 147 108 147
429 m 109 148 148 148 109 148
430 n 110 149 149 149 110 149
431 o 111 150 150 150 111 150
432 p 112 151 151 151 112 151
433 q 113 152 152 152 113 152
434 r 114 153 153 153 114 153
435 s 115 162 162 162 115 162
436 t 116 163 163 163 116 163
437 u 117 164 164 164 117 164
438 v 118 165 165 165 118 165
439 w 119 166 166 166 119 166
440 x 120 167 167 167 120 167
441 y 121 168 168 168 121 168
442 z 122 169 169 169 122 169
443 { 123 192 192 251 123 192 ###
444 | 124 79 79 79 124 79
445 } 125 208 208 253 125 208 ###
446 ~ 126 161 161 255 126 161 ###
447 <DELETE> 127 7 7 7 127 7
448 <PADDING CHARACTER> 128 32 32 32 194.128 32
449 <HIGH OCTET PRESET> 129 33 33 33 194.129 33
450 <BREAK PERMITTED HERE> 130 34 34 34 194.130 34
451 <NO BREAK HERE> 131 35 35 35 194.131 35
452 <INDEX> 132 36 36 36 194.132 36
453 <NEXT LINE> 133 21 37 37 194.133 37 ***
454 <START OF SELECTED AREA> 134 6 6 6 194.134 6
455 <END OF SELECTED AREA> 135 23 23 23 194.135 23
456 <CHARACTER TABULATION SET> 136 40 40 40 194.136 40
457 <CHARACTER TABULATION WITH JUSTIFICATION> 137 41 41 41 194.137 41
458 <LINE TABULATION SET> 138 42 42 42 194.138 42
459 <PARTIAL LINE FORWARD> 139 43 43 43 194.139 43
460 <PARTIAL LINE BACKWARD> 140 44 44 44 194.140 44
461 <REVERSE LINE FEED> 141 9 9 9 194.141 9
462 <SINGLE SHIFT TWO> 142 10 10 10 194.142 10
463 <SINGLE SHIFT THREE> 143 27 27 27 194.143 27
464 <DEVICE CONTROL STRING> 144 48 48 48 194.144 48
465 <PRIVATE USE ONE> 145 49 49 49 194.145 49
466 <PRIVATE USE TWO> 146 26 26 26 194.146 26
467 <SET TRANSMIT STATE> 147 51 51 51 194.147 51
468 <CANCEL CHARACTER> 148 52 52 52 194.148 52
469 <MESSAGE WAITING> 149 53 53 53 194.149 53
470 <START OF GUARDED AREA> 150 54 54 54 194.150 54
471 <END OF GUARDED AREA> 151 8 8 8 194.151 8
472 <START OF STRING> 152 56 56 56 194.152 56
473 <SINGLE GRAPHIC CHARACTER INTRODUCER> 153 57 57 57 194.153 57
474 <SINGLE CHARACTER INTRODUCER> 154 58 58 58 194.154 58
475 <CONTROL SEQUENCE INTRODUCER> 155 59 59 59 194.155 59
476 <STRING TERMINATOR> 156 4 4 4 194.156 4
477 <OPERATING SYSTEM COMMAND> 157 20 20 20 194.157 20
478 <PRIVACY MESSAGE> 158 62 62 62 194.158 62
479 <APPLICATION PROGRAM COMMAND> 159 255 255 95 194.159 255 ###
480 <NON-BREAKING SPACE> 160 65 65 65 194.160 128.65
481 <INVERTED EXCLAMATION MARK> 161 170 170 170 194.161 128.66
482 <CENT SIGN> 162 74 74 176 194.162 128.67 ###
483 <POUND SIGN> 163 177 177 177 194.163 128.68
484 <CURRENCY SIGN> 164 159 159 159 194.164 128.69
485 <YEN SIGN> 165 178 178 178 194.165 128.70
486 <BROKEN BAR> 166 106 106 208 194.166 128.71 ###
487 <SECTION SIGN> 167 181 181 181 194.167 128.72
488 <DIAERESIS> 168 189 187 121 194.168 128.73 *** ###
489 <COPYRIGHT SIGN> 169 180 180 180 194.169 128.74
490 <FEMININE ORDINAL INDICATOR> 170 154 154 154 194.170 128.81
491 <LEFT POINTING GUILLEMET> 171 138 138 138 194.171 128.82
492 <NOT SIGN> 172 95 176 186 194.172 128.83 *** ###
493 <SOFT HYPHEN> 173 202 202 202 194.173 128.84
494 <REGISTERED TRADE MARK SIGN> 174 175 175 175 194.174 128.85
495 <MACRON> 175 188 188 161 194.175 128.86 ###
496 <DEGREE SIGN> 176 144 144 144 194.176 128.87
497 <PLUS-OR-MINUS SIGN> 177 143 143 143 194.177 128.88
498 <SUPERSCRIPT TWO> 178 234 234 234 194.178 128.89
499 <SUPERSCRIPT THREE> 179 250 250 250 194.179 128.98
500 <ACUTE ACCENT> 180 190 190 190 194.180 128.99
501 <MICRO SIGN> 181 160 160 160 194.181 128.100
502 <PARAGRAPH SIGN> 182 182 182 182 194.182 128.101
503 <MIDDLE DOT> 183 179 179 179 194.183 128.102
504 <CEDILLA> 184 157 157 157 194.184 128.103
505 <SUPERSCRIPT ONE> 185 218 218 218 194.185 128.104
506 <MASC. ORDINAL INDICATOR> 186 155 155 155 194.186 128.105
507 <RIGHT POINTING GUILLEMET> 187 139 139 139 194.187 128.106
508 <FRACTION ONE QUARTER> 188 183 183 183 194.188 128.112
509 <FRACTION ONE HALF> 189 184 184 184 194.189 128.113
510 <FRACTION THREE QUARTERS> 190 185 185 185 194.190 128.114
511 <INVERTED QUESTION MARK> 191 171 171 171 194.191 128.115
512 <A WITH GRAVE> 192 100 100 100 195.128 138.65
513 <A WITH ACUTE> 193 101 101 101 195.129 138.66
514 <A WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 194 98 98 98 195.130 138.67
515 <A WITH TILDE> 195 102 102 102 195.131 138.68
516 <A WITH DIAERESIS> 196 99 99 99 195.132 138.69
517 <A WITH RING ABOVE> 197 103 103 103 195.133 138.70
518 <CAPITAL LIGATURE AE> 198 158 158 158 195.134 138.71
519 <C WITH CEDILLA> 199 104 104 104 195.135 138.72
520 <E WITH GRAVE> 200 116 116 116 195.136 138.73
521 <E WITH ACUTE> 201 113 113 113 195.137 138.74
522 <E WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 202 114 114 114 195.138 138.81
523 <E WITH DIAERESIS> 203 115 115 115 195.139 138.82
524 <I WITH GRAVE> 204 120 120 120 195.140 138.83
525 <I WITH ACUTE> 205 117 117 117 195.141 138.84
526 <I WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 206 118 118 118 195.142 138.85
527 <I WITH DIAERESIS> 207 119 119 119 195.143 138.86
528 <CAPITAL LETTER ETH> 208 172 172 172 195.144 138.87
529 <N WITH TILDE> 209 105 105 105 195.145 138.88
530 <O WITH GRAVE> 210 237 237 237 195.146 138.89
531 <O WITH ACUTE> 211 238 238 238 195.147 138.98
532 <O WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 212 235 235 235 195.148 138.99
533 <O WITH TILDE> 213 239 239 239 195.149 138.100
534 <O WITH DIAERESIS> 214 236 236 236 195.150 138.101
535 <MULTIPLICATION SIGN> 215 191 191 191 195.151 138.102
536 <O WITH STROKE> 216 128 128 128 195.152 138.103
537 <U WITH GRAVE> 217 253 253 224 195.153 138.104 ###
538 <U WITH ACUTE> 218 254 254 254 195.154 138.105
539 <U WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 219 251 251 221 195.155 138.106 ###
540 <U WITH DIAERESIS> 220 252 252 252 195.156 138.112
541 <Y WITH ACUTE> 221 173 186 173 195.157 138.113 *** ###
542 <CAPITAL LETTER THORN> 222 174 174 174 195.158 138.114
543 <SMALL LETTER SHARP S> 223 89 89 89 195.159 138.115
544 <a WITH GRAVE> 224 68 68 68 195.160 139.65
545 <a WITH ACUTE> 225 69 69 69 195.161 139.66
546 <a WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 226 66 66 66 195.162 139.67
547 <a WITH TILDE> 227 70 70 70 195.163 139.68
548 <a WITH DIAERESIS> 228 67 67 67 195.164 139.69
549 <a WITH RING ABOVE> 229 71 71 71 195.165 139.70
550 <SMALL LIGATURE ae> 230 156 156 156 195.166 139.71
551 <c WITH CEDILLA> 231 72 72 72 195.167 139.72
552 <e WITH GRAVE> 232 84 84 84 195.168 139.73
553 <e WITH ACUTE> 233 81 81 81 195.169 139.74
554 <e WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 234 82 82 82 195.170 139.81
555 <e WITH DIAERESIS> 235 83 83 83 195.171 139.82
556 <i WITH GRAVE> 236 88 88 88 195.172 139.83
557 <i WITH ACUTE> 237 85 85 85 195.173 139.84
558 <i WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 238 86 86 86 195.174 139.85
559 <i WITH DIAERESIS> 239 87 87 87 195.175 139.86
560 <SMALL LETTER eth> 240 140 140 140 195.176 139.87
561 <n WITH TILDE> 241 73 73 73 195.177 139.88
562 <o WITH GRAVE> 242 205 205 205 195.178 139.89
563 <o WITH ACUTE> 243 206 206 206 195.179 139.98
564 <o WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 244 203 203 203 195.180 139.99
565 <o WITH TILDE> 245 207 207 207 195.181 139.100
566 <o WITH DIAERESIS> 246 204 204 204 195.182 139.101
567 <DIVISION SIGN> 247 225 225 225 195.183 139.102
568 <o WITH STROKE> 248 112 112 112 195.184 139.103
569 <u WITH GRAVE> 249 221 221 192 195.185 139.104 ###
570 <u WITH ACUTE> 250 222 222 222 195.186 139.105
571 <u WITH CIRCUMFLEX> 251 219 219 219 195.187 139.106
572 <u WITH DIAERESIS> 252 220 220 220 195.188 139.112
573 <y WITH ACUTE> 253 141 141 141 195.189 139.113
574 <SMALL LETTER thorn> 254 142 142 142 195.190 139.114
575 <y WITH DIAERESIS> 255 223 223 223 195.191 139.115
577 If you would rather see the above table in CCSID 0037 order rather than
578 ASCII + Latin-1 order then run the table through:
586 perl -ne 'if(/.{43}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}/)'\
588 -e 'END{print map{$_->[0]}' \
589 -e ' sort{$a->[1] <=> $b->[1]}' \
590 -e ' map{[$_,substr($_,52,3)]}@l;}' perlebcdic.pod
592 If you would rather see it in CCSID 1047 order then change the number
593 52 in the last line to 61, like this:
601 perl -ne 'if(/.{43}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}/)'\
603 -e 'END{print map{$_->[0]}' \
604 -e ' sort{$a->[1] <=> $b->[1]}' \
605 -e ' map{[$_,substr($_,61,3)]}@l;}' perlebcdic.pod
607 If you would rather see it in POSIX-BC order then change the number
608 61 in the last line to 70, like this:
616 perl -ne 'if(/.{43}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}\s{6,8}\d{1,3}/)'\
618 -e 'END{print map{$_->[0]}' \
619 -e ' sort{$a->[1] <=> $b->[1]}' \
620 -e ' map{[$_,substr($_,70,3)]}@l;}' perlebcdic.pod
623 =head1 IDENTIFYING CHARACTER CODE SETS
625 To determine the character set you are running under from perl one
626 could use the return value of ord() or chr() to test one or more
627 character values. For example:
629 $is_ascii = "A" eq chr(65);
630 $is_ebcdic = "A" eq chr(193);
632 Also, "\t" is a C<HORIZONTAL TABULATION> character so that:
634 $is_ascii = ord("\t") == 9;
635 $is_ebcdic = ord("\t") == 5;
637 To distinguish EBCDIC code pages try looking at one or more of
638 the characters that differ between them. For example:
640 $is_ebcdic_37 = "\n" eq chr(37);
641 $is_ebcdic_1047 = "\n" eq chr(21);
643 Or better still choose a character that is uniquely encoded in any
644 of the code sets, e.g.:
646 $is_ascii = ord('[') == 91;
647 $is_ebcdic_37 = ord('[') == 186;
648 $is_ebcdic_1047 = ord('[') == 173;
649 $is_ebcdic_POSIX_BC = ord('[') == 187;
651 However, it would be unwise to write tests such as:
653 $is_ascii = "\r" ne chr(13); # WRONG
654 $is_ascii = "\n" ne chr(10); # ILL ADVISED
656 Obviously the first of these will fail to distinguish most ASCII platforms
657 from either a CCSID 0037, a 1047, or a POSIX-BC EBCDIC platform since "\r" eq
658 chr(13) under all of those coded character sets. But note too that
659 because "\n" is chr(13) and "\r" is chr(10) on the MacIntosh (which is an
660 ASCII platform) the second C<$is_ascii> test will lead to trouble there.
662 To determine whether or not perl was built under an EBCDIC
663 code page you can use the Config module like so:
666 $is_ebcdic = $Config{'ebcdic'} eq 'define';
672 In order to convert a string of characters from one character set to
673 another a simple list of numbers, such as in the right columns in the
674 above table, along with perl's tr/// operator is all that is needed.
675 The data in the table are in ASCII order hence the EBCDIC columns
676 provide easy to use ASCII to EBCDIC operations that are also easily
679 For example, to convert ASCII to code page 037 take the output of the second
680 column from the output of recipe 0 (modified to add \\ characters) and use
684 '\000\001\002\003\234\011\206\177\227\215\216\013\014\015\016\017' .
685 '\020\021\022\023\235\205\010\207\030\031\222\217\034\035\036\037' .
686 '\200\201\202\203\204\012\027\033\210\211\212\213\214\005\006\007' .
687 '\220\221\026\223\224\225\226\004\230\231\232\233\024\025\236\032' .
688 '\040\240\342\344\340\341\343\345\347\361\242\056\074\050\053\174' .
689 '\046\351\352\353\350\355\356\357\354\337\041\044\052\051\073\254' .
690 '\055\057\302\304\300\301\303\305\307\321\246\054\045\137\076\077' .
691 '\370\311\312\313\310\315\316\317\314\140\072\043\100\047\075\042' .
692 '\330\141\142\143\144\145\146\147\150\151\253\273\360\375\376\261' .
693 '\260\152\153\154\155\156\157\160\161\162\252\272\346\270\306\244' .
694 '\265\176\163\164\165\166\167\170\171\172\241\277\320\335\336\256' .
695 '\136\243\245\267\251\247\266\274\275\276\133\135\257\250\264\327' .
696 '\173\101\102\103\104\105\106\107\110\111\255\364\366\362\363\365' .
697 '\175\112\113\114\115\116\117\120\121\122\271\373\374\371\372\377' .
698 '\134\367\123\124\125\126\127\130\131\132\262\324\326\322\323\325' .
699 '\060\061\062\063\064\065\066\067\070\071\263\333\334\331\332\237' ;
701 my $ebcdic_string = $ascii_string;
702 eval '$ebcdic_string =~ tr/' . $cp_037 . '/\000-\377/';
704 To convert from EBCDIC 037 to ASCII just reverse the order of the tr///
707 my $ascii_string = $ebcdic_string;
708 eval '$ascii_string =~ tr/\000-\377/' . $cp_037 . '/';
710 Similarly one could take the output of the third column from recipe 0 to
711 obtain a C<$cp_1047> table. The fourth column of the output from recipe
712 0 could provide a C<$cp_posix_bc> table suitable for transcoding as well.
716 XPG operability often implies the presence of an I<iconv> utility
717 available from the shell or from the C library. Consult your system's
718 documentation for information on iconv.
720 On OS/390 or z/OS see the iconv(1) manpage. One way to invoke the iconv
721 shell utility from within perl would be to:
723 # OS/390 or z/OS example
724 $ascii_data = `echo '$ebcdic_data'| iconv -f IBM-1047 -t ISO8859-1`
728 # OS/390 or z/OS example
729 $ebcdic_data = `echo '$ascii_data'| iconv -f ISO8859-1 -t IBM-1047`
731 For other perl based conversion options see the Convert::* modules on CPAN.
735 The OS/390 and z/OS C run time libraries provide _atoe() and _etoa() functions.
737 =head1 OPERATOR DIFFERENCES
739 The C<..> range operator treats certain character ranges with
740 care on EBCDIC platforms. For example the following array
741 will have twenty six elements on either an EBCDIC platform
742 or an ASCII platform:
744 @alphabet = ('A'..'Z'); # $#alphabet == 25
746 The bitwise operators such as & ^ | may return different results
747 when operating on string or character data in a perl program running
748 on an EBCDIC platform than when run on an ASCII platform. Here is
749 an example adapted from the one in L<perlop>:
751 # EBCDIC-based examples
752 print "j p \n" ^ " a h"; # prints "JAPH\n"
753 print "JA" | " ph\n"; # prints "japh\n"
754 print "JAPH\nJunk" & "\277\277\277\277\277"; # prints "japh\n";
755 print 'p N$' ^ " E<H\n"; # prints "Perl\n";
757 An interesting property of the 32 C0 control characters
758 in the ASCII table is that they can "literally" be constructed
759 as control characters in perl, e.g. C<(chr(0) eq C<\c@>)>
760 C<(chr(1) eq C<\cA>)>, and so on. Perl on EBCDIC platforms has been
761 ported to take C<\c@> to chr(0) and C<\cA> to chr(1), etc. as well, but the
762 thirty three characters that result depend on which code page you are
763 using. The table below uses the standard acronyms for the controls.
764 The POSIX-BC and 1047 sets are
765 identical throughout this range and differ from the 0037 set at only
766 one spot (21 decimal). Note that the C<LINE FEED> character
767 may be generated by C<\cJ> on ASCII platforms but by C<\cU> on 1047 or POSIX-BC
768 platforms and cannot be generated as a C<"\c.letter."> control character on
769 0037 platforms. Note also that C<\c\> cannot be the final element in a string
770 or regex, as it will absorb the terminator. But C<\c\I<X>> is a C<FILE
771 SEPARATOR> concatenated with I<X> for all I<X>.
773 chr ord 8859-1 0037 1047 && POSIX-BC
774 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
776 \c@ 0 <NUL> <NUL> <NUL>
777 \cA 1 <SOH> <SOH> <SOH>
778 \cB 2 <STX> <STX> <STX>
779 \cC 3 <ETX> <ETX> <ETX>
780 \cD 4 <EOT> <ST> <ST>
781 \cE 5 <ENQ> <HT> <HT>
782 \cF 6 <ACK> <SSA> <SSA>
783 \cG 7 <BEL> <DEL> <DEL>
784 \cH 8 <BS> <EPA> <EPA>
786 \cJ 10 <LF> <SS2> <SS2>
787 \cK 11 <VT> <VT> <VT>
788 \cL 12 <FF> <FF> <FF>
789 \cM 13 <CR> <CR> <CR>
790 \cN 14 <SO> <SO> <SO>
791 \cO 15 <SI> <SI> <SI>
792 \cP 16 <DLE> <DLE> <DLE>
793 \cQ 17 <DC1> <DC1> <DC1>
794 \cR 18 <DC2> <DC2> <DC2>
795 \cS 19 <DC3> <DC3> <DC3>
796 \cT 20 <DC4> <OSC> <OSC>
797 \cU 21 <NAK> <NEL> <LF> ***
798 \cV 22 <SYN> <BS> <BS>
799 \cW 23 <ETB> <ESA> <ESA>
800 \cX 24 <CAN> <CAN> <CAN>
801 \cY 25 <EOM> <EOM> <EOM>
802 \cZ 26 <SUB> <PU2> <PU2>
803 \c[ 27 <ESC> <SS3> <SS3>
804 \c\X 28 <FS>X <FS>X <FS>X
805 \c] 29 <GS> <GS> <GS>
806 \c^ 30 <RS> <RS> <RS>
807 \c_ 31 <US> <US> <US>
809 =head1 FUNCTION DIFFERENCES
815 chr() must be given an EBCDIC code number argument to yield a desired
816 character return value on an EBCDIC platform. For example:
818 $CAPITAL_LETTER_A = chr(193);
822 ord() will return EBCDIC code number values on an EBCDIC platform.
825 $the_number_193 = ord("A");
829 The c and C templates for pack() are dependent upon character set
830 encoding. Examples of usage on EBCDIC include:
832 $foo = pack("CCCC",193,194,195,196);
834 $foo = pack("C4",193,194,195,196);
837 $foo = pack("ccxxcc",193,194,195,196);
842 One must be careful with scalars and strings that are passed to
843 print that contain ASCII encodings. One common place
844 for this to occur is in the output of the MIME type header for
845 CGI script writing. For example, many perl programming guides
846 recommend something similar to:
848 print "Content-type:\ttext/html\015\012\015\012";
849 # this may be wrong on EBCDIC
851 Under the IBM OS/390 USS Web Server or WebSphere on z/OS for example
852 you should instead write that as:
854 print "Content-type:\ttext/html\r\n\r\n"; # OK for DGW et alia
856 That is because the translation from EBCDIC to ASCII is done
857 by the web server in this case (such code will not be appropriate for
858 the Macintosh however). Consult your web server's documentation for
863 The formats that can convert characters to numbers and vice versa
864 will be different from their ASCII counterparts when executed
865 on an EBCDIC platform. Examples include:
867 printf("%c%c%c",193,194,195); # prints ABC
871 EBCDIC sort results may differ from ASCII sort results especially for
872 mixed case strings. This is discussed in more detail below.
876 See the discussion of printf() above. An example of the use
879 $CAPITAL_LETTER_A = sprintf("%c",193);
883 See the discussion of pack() above.
887 =head1 REGULAR EXPRESSION DIFFERENCES
889 As of perl 5.005_03 the letter range regular expression such as
890 [A-Z] and [a-z] have been especially coded to not pick up gap
891 characters. For example, characters such as E<ocirc> C<o WITH CIRCUMFLEX>
892 that lie between I and J would not be matched by the
893 regular expression range C</[H-K]/>. This works in
894 the other direction, too, if either of the range end points is
895 explicitly numeric: C<[\x89-\x91]> will match C<\x8e>, even
896 though C<\x89> is C<i> and C<\x91 > is C<j>, and C<\x8e>
897 is a gap character from the alphabetic viewpoint.
899 If you do want to match the alphabet gap characters in a single octet
900 regular expression try matching the hex or octal code such
901 as C</\313/> on EBCDIC or C</\364/> on ASCII platforms to
902 have your regular expression match C<o WITH CIRCUMFLEX>.
904 Another construct to be wary of is the inappropriate use of hex or
905 octal constants in regular expressions. Consider the following
909 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
910 $char =~ /[\000-\037]/;
914 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
915 $char =~ /[\040-\176]/;
919 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
924 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
925 $char =~ /[\200-\237]/;
929 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
930 $char =~ /[\240-\377]/;
933 The above would be adequate if the concern was only with numeric code points.
934 However, the concern may be with characters rather than code points
935 and on an EBCDIC platform it may be desirable for constructs such as
936 C<if (is_print_ascii("A")) {print "A is a printable character\n";}> to print
937 out the expected message. One way to represent the above collection
938 of character classification subs that is capable of working across the
939 four coded character sets discussed in this document is as follows:
942 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
943 if (ord('^')==94) { # ascii
944 return $char =~ /[\000-\037]/;
946 if (ord('^')==176) { # 0037
947 return $char =~ /[\000-\003\067\055-\057\026\005\045\013-\023\074\075\062\046\030\031\077\047\034-\037]/;
949 if (ord('^')==95 || ord('^')==106) { # 1047 || posix-bc
950 return $char =~ /[\000-\003\067\055-\057\026\005\025\013-\023\074\075\062\046\030\031\077\047\034-\037]/;
955 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
956 $char =~ /[ !"\#\$%&'()*+,\-.\/0-9:;<=>?\@A-Z[\\\]^_`a-z{|}~]/;
960 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
961 if (ord('^')==94) { # ascii
962 return $char eq "\177";
965 return $char eq "\007";
970 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
971 if (ord('^')==94) { # ascii
972 return $char =~ /[\200-\237]/;
974 if (ord('^')==176) { # 0037
975 return $char =~ /[\040-\044\025\006\027\050-\054\011\012\033\060\061\032\063-\066\010\070-\073\040\024\076\377]/;
977 if (ord('^')==95) { # 1047
978 return $char =~ /[\040-\045\006\027\050-\054\011\012\033\060\061\032\063-\066\010\070-\073\040\024\076\377]/;
980 if (ord('^')==106) { # posix-bc
982 /[\040-\045\006\027\050-\054\011\012\033\060\061\032\063-\066\010\070-\073\040\024\076\137]/;
987 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
988 if (ord('^')==94) { # ascii
989 return $char =~ /[\240-\377]/;
991 if (ord('^')==176) { # 0037
993 /[\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]/;
995 if (ord('^')==95) { # 1047
997 /[\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]/;
999 if (ord('^')==106) { # posix-bc
1001 /[\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]/;
1005 Note however that only the C<Is_ascii_print()> sub is really independent
1006 of coded character set. Another way to write C<Is_latin_1()> would be
1007 to use the characters in the range explicitly:
1010 my $char = substr(shift,0,1);
1011 $char =~ /[ ¡¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª«¬
\ad®¯°±²³´µ¶·¸¹º»¼½¾¿ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõö÷øùúûüýþÿ]/;
1014 Although that form may run into trouble in network transit (due to the
1015 presence of 8 bit characters) or on non ISO-Latin character sets.
1019 Most socket programming assumes ASCII character encodings in network
1020 byte order. Exceptions can include CGI script writing under a
1021 host web server where the server may take care of translation for you.
1022 Most host web servers convert EBCDIC data to ISO-8859-1 or Unicode on
1027 One big difference between ASCII based character sets and EBCDIC ones
1028 are the relative positions of upper and lower case letters and the
1029 letters compared to the digits. If sorted on an ASCII based platform the
1030 two letter abbreviation for a physician comes before the two letter
1033 @sorted = sort(qw(Dr. dr.)); # @sorted holds ('Dr.','dr.') on ASCII,
1034 # but ('dr.','Dr.') on EBCDIC
1036 The property of lower case before uppercase letters in EBCDIC is
1037 even carried to the Latin 1 EBCDIC pages such as 0037 and 1047.
1038 An example would be that E<Euml> C<E WITH DIAERESIS> (203) comes
1039 before E<euml> C<e WITH DIAERESIS> (235) on an ASCII platform, but
1040 the latter (83) comes before the former (115) on an EBCDIC platform.
1041 (Astute readers will note that the upper case version of E<szlig>
1042 C<SMALL LETTER SHARP S> is simply "SS" and that the upper case version of
1043 E<yuml> C<y WITH DIAERESIS> is not in the 0..255 range but it is
1044 at U+x0178 in Unicode, or C<"\x{178}"> in a Unicode enabled Perl).
1046 The sort order will cause differences between results obtained on
1047 ASCII platforms versus EBCDIC platforms. What follows are some suggestions
1048 on how to deal with these differences.
1050 =head2 Ignore ASCII vs. EBCDIC sort differences.
1052 This is the least computationally expensive strategy. It may require
1053 some user education.
1055 =head2 MONO CASE then sort data.
1057 In order to minimize the expense of mono casing mixed test try to
1058 C<tr///> towards the character set case most employed within the data.
1059 If the data are primarily UPPERCASE non Latin 1 then apply tr/[a-z]/[A-Z]/
1060 then sort(). If the data are primarily lowercase non Latin 1 then
1061 apply tr/[A-Z]/[a-z]/ before sorting. If the data are primarily UPPERCASE
1062 and include Latin-1 characters then apply:
1065 tr/[àáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõöøùúûüýþ]/[ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖØÙÚÛÜÝÞ/;
1068 then sort(). Do note however that such Latin-1 manipulation does not
1069 address the E<yuml> C<y WITH DIAERESIS> character that will remain at
1070 code point 255 on ASCII platforms, but 223 on most EBCDIC platforms
1071 where it will sort to a place less than the EBCDIC numerals. With a
1072 Unicode enabled Perl you might try:
1076 The strategy of mono casing data before sorting does not preserve the case
1077 of the data and may not be acceptable for that reason.
1079 =head2 Convert, sort data, then re convert.
1081 This is the most expensive proposition that does not employ a network
1084 =head2 Perform sorting on one type of platform only.
1086 This strategy can employ a network connection. As such
1087 it would be computationally expensive.
1089 =head1 TRANSFORMATION FORMATS
1091 There are a variety of ways of transforming data with an intra character set
1092 mapping that serve a variety of purposes. Sorting was discussed in the
1093 previous section and a few of the other more popular mapping techniques are
1096 =head2 URL decoding and encoding
1098 Note that some URLs have hexadecimal ASCII code points in them in an
1099 attempt to overcome character or protocol limitation issues. For example
1100 the tilde character is not on every keyboard hence a URL of the form:
1102 http://www.pvhp.com/~pvhp/
1104 may also be expressed as either of:
1106 http://www.pvhp.com/%7Epvhp/
1108 http://www.pvhp.com/%7epvhp/
1110 where 7E is the hexadecimal ASCII code point for '~'. Here is an example
1111 of decoding such a URL under CCSID 1047:
1113 $url = 'http://www.pvhp.com/%7Epvhp/';
1114 # this array assumes code page 1047
1116 0, 1, 2, 3, 55, 45, 46, 47, 22, 5, 21, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,
1117 16, 17, 18, 19, 60, 61, 50, 38, 24, 25, 63, 39, 28, 29, 30, 31,
1118 64, 90,127,123, 91,108, 80,125, 77, 93, 92, 78,107, 96, 75, 97,
1119 240,241,242,243,244,245,246,247,248,249,122, 94, 76,126,110,111,
1120 124,193,194,195,196,197,198,199,200,201,209,210,211,212,213,214,
1121 215,216,217,226,227,228,229,230,231,232,233,173,224,189, 95,109,
1122 121,129,130,131,132,133,134,135,136,137,145,146,147,148,149,150,
1123 151,152,153,162,163,164,165,166,167,168,169,192, 79,208,161, 7,
1124 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 6, 23, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 9, 10, 27,
1125 48, 49, 26, 51, 52, 53, 54, 8, 56, 57, 58, 59, 4, 20, 62,255,
1126 65,170, 74,177,159,178,106,181,187,180,154,138,176,202,175,188,
1127 144,143,234,250,190,160,182,179,157,218,155,139,183,184,185,171,
1128 100,101, 98,102, 99,103,158,104,116,113,114,115,120,117,118,119,
1129 172,105,237,238,235,239,236,191,128,253,254,251,252,186,174, 89,
1130 68, 69, 66, 70, 67, 71,156, 72, 84, 81, 82, 83, 88, 85, 86, 87,
1131 140, 73,205,206,203,207,204,225,112,221,222,219,220,141,142,223
1133 $url =~ s/%([0-9a-fA-F]{2})/pack("c",$a2e_1047[hex($1)])/ge;
1135 Conversely, here is a partial solution for the task of encoding such
1136 a URL under the 1047 code page:
1138 $url = 'http://www.pvhp.com/~pvhp/';
1139 # this array assumes code page 1047
1141 0, 1, 2, 3,156, 9,134,127,151,141,142, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,
1142 16, 17, 18, 19,157, 10, 8,135, 24, 25,146,143, 28, 29, 30, 31,
1143 128,129,130,131,132,133, 23, 27,136,137,138,139,140, 5, 6, 7,
1144 144,145, 22,147,148,149,150, 4,152,153,154,155, 20, 21,158, 26,
1145 32,160,226,228,224,225,227,229,231,241,162, 46, 60, 40, 43,124,
1146 38,233,234,235,232,237,238,239,236,223, 33, 36, 42, 41, 59, 94,
1147 45, 47,194,196,192,193,195,197,199,209,166, 44, 37, 95, 62, 63,
1148 248,201,202,203,200,205,206,207,204, 96, 58, 35, 64, 39, 61, 34,
1149 216, 97, 98, 99,100,101,102,103,104,105,171,187,240,253,254,177,
1150 176,106,107,108,109,110,111,112,113,114,170,186,230,184,198,164,
1151 181,126,115,116,117,118,119,120,121,122,161,191,208, 91,222,174,
1152 172,163,165,183,169,167,182,188,189,190,221,168,175, 93,180,215,
1153 123, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73,173,244,246,242,243,245,
1154 125, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82,185,251,252,249,250,255,
1155 92,247, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90,178,212,214,210,211,213,
1156 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57,179,219,220,217,218,159
1158 # The following regular expression does not address the
1159 # mappings for: ('.' => '%2E', '/' => '%2F', ':' => '%3A')
1160 $url =~ s/([\t "#%&\(\),;<=>\?\@\[\\\]^`{|}~])/sprintf("%%%02X",$e2a_1047[ord($1)])/ge;
1162 where a more complete solution would split the URL into components
1163 and apply a full s/// substitution only to the appropriate parts.
1165 In the remaining examples a @e2a or @a2e array may be employed
1166 but the assignment will not be shown explicitly. For code page 1047
1167 you could use the @a2e_1047 or @e2a_1047 arrays just shown.
1169 =head2 uu encoding and decoding
1171 The C<u> template to pack() or unpack() will render EBCDIC data in EBCDIC
1172 characters equivalent to their ASCII counterparts. For example, the
1173 following will print "Yes indeed\n" on either an ASCII or EBCDIC computer:
1175 $all_byte_chrs = '';
1176 for (0..255) { $all_byte_chrs .= chr($_); }
1177 $uuencode_byte_chrs = pack('u', $all_byte_chrs);
1178 ($uu = <<'ENDOFHEREDOC') =~ s/^\s*//gm;
1179 M``$"`P0%!@<("0H+#`T.#Q`1$A,4%187&!D:&QP='A\@(2(C)"4F)R@I*BLL
1180 M+2XO,#$R,S0U-C<X.3H[/#T^/T!!0D-$149'2$E*2TQ-3D]045)35%565UA9
1181 M6EM<75Y?8&%B8V1E9F=H:6IK;&UN;W!Q<G-T=79W>'EZ>WQ]?G^`@8*#A(6&
1182 MAXB)BHN,C8Z/D)&2DY25EI>8F9J;G)V>GZ"AHJ.DI::GJ*FJJZRMKJ^PL;*S
1183 MM+6VM[BYNKN\O;Z_P,'"P\3%QL?(R<K+S,W.S]#1TM/4U=;7V-G:V]S=WM_@
1184 ?X>+CY.7FY^CIZNOL[>[O\/'R\_3U]O?X^?K[_/W^_P``
1186 if ($uuencode_byte_chrs eq $uu) {
1189 $uudecode_byte_chrs = unpack('u', $uuencode_byte_chrs);
1190 if ($uudecode_byte_chrs eq $all_byte_chrs) {
1194 Here is a very spartan uudecoder that will work on EBCDIC provided
1195 that the @e2a array is filled in appropriately:
1197 #!/usr/local/bin/perl
1198 @e2a = ( # this must be filled in
1200 $_ = <> until ($mode,$file) = /^begin\s*(\d*)\s*(\S*)/;
1201 open(OUT, "> $file") if $file ne "";
1205 next unless int(((($e2a[ord()] - 32 ) & 077) + 2) / 3) ==
1207 print OUT unpack("u", $_);
1210 chmod oct($mode), $file;
1213 =head2 Quoted-Printable encoding and decoding
1215 On ASCII encoded platforms it is possible to strip characters outside of
1216 the printable set using:
1218 # This QP encoder works on ASCII only
1219 $qp_string =~ s/([=\x00-\x1F\x80-\xFF])/sprintf("=%02X",ord($1))/ge;
1221 Whereas a QP encoder that works on both ASCII and EBCDIC platforms
1222 would look somewhat like the following (where the EBCDIC branch @e2a
1223 array is omitted for brevity):
1225 if (ord('A') == 65) { # ASCII
1226 $delete = "\x7F"; # ASCII
1227 @e2a = (0 .. 255) # ASCII to ASCII identity map
1230 $delete = "\x07"; # EBCDIC
1231 @e2a = # EBCDIC to ASCII map (as shown above)
1234 s/([^ !"\#\$%&'()*+,\-.\/0-9:;<>?\@A-Z[\\\]^_`a-z{|}~$delete])/sprintf("=%02X",$e2a[ord($1)])/ge;
1236 (although in production code the substitutions might be done
1237 in the EBCDIC branch with the @e2a array and separately in the
1238 ASCII branch without the expense of the identity map).
1240 Such QP strings can be decoded with:
1242 # This QP decoder is limited to ASCII only
1243 $string =~ s/=([0-9A-Fa-f][0-9A-Fa-f])/chr hex $1/ge;
1244 $string =~ s/=[\n\r]+$//;
1246 Whereas a QP decoder that works on both ASCII and EBCDIC platforms
1247 would look somewhat like the following (where the @a2e array is
1248 omitted for brevity):
1250 $string =~ s/=([0-9A-Fa-f][0-9A-Fa-f])/chr $a2e[hex $1]/ge;
1251 $string =~ s/=[\n\r]+$//;
1253 =head2 Caesarian ciphers
1255 The practice of shifting an alphabet one or more characters for encipherment
1256 dates back thousands of years and was explicitly detailed by Gaius Julius
1257 Caesar in his B<Gallic Wars> text. A single alphabet shift is sometimes
1258 referred to as a rotation and the shift amount is given as a number $n after
1259 the string 'rot' or "rot$n". Rot0 and rot26 would designate identity maps
1260 on the 26 letter English version of the Latin alphabet. Rot13 has the
1261 interesting property that alternate subsequent invocations are identity maps
1262 (thus rot13 is its own non-trivial inverse in the group of 26 alphabet
1263 rotations). Hence the following is a rot13 encoder and decoder that will
1264 work on ASCII and EBCDIC platforms:
1266 #!/usr/local/bin/perl
1269 tr/n-za-mN-ZA-M/a-zA-Z/;
1275 perl -ne 'tr/n-za-mN-ZA-M/a-zA-Z/;print'
1278 =head1 Hashing order and checksums
1280 To the extent that it is possible to write code that depends on
1281 hashing order there may be differences between hashes as stored
1282 on an ASCII based platform and hashes stored on an EBCDIC based platform.
1285 =head1 I18N AND L10N
1287 Internationalization(I18N) and localization(L10N) are supported at least
1288 in principle even on EBCDIC platforms. The details are system dependent
1289 and discussed under the L<perlebcdic/OS ISSUES> section below.
1291 =head1 MULTI OCTET CHARACTER SETS
1293 Perl may work with an internal UTF-EBCDIC encoding form for wide characters
1294 on EBCDIC platforms in a manner analogous to the way that it works with
1295 the UTF-8 internal encoding form on ASCII based platforms.
1297 Legacy multi byte EBCDIC code pages XXX.
1301 There may be a few system dependent issues
1302 of concern to EBCDIC Perl programmers.
1310 The PASE environment is runtime environment for OS/400 that can run
1311 executables built for PowerPC AIX in OS/400, see L<perlos400>. PASE
1312 is ASCII-based, not EBCDIC-based as the ILE.
1322 Perl runs under Unix Systems Services or USS.
1328 B<chcp> is supported as a shell utility for displaying and changing
1329 one's code page. See also L<chcp>.
1331 =item dataset access
1333 For sequential data set access try:
1335 my @ds_records = `cat //DSNAME`;
1339 my @ds_records = `cat //'HLQ.DSNAME'`;
1341 See also the OS390::Stdio module on CPAN.
1343 =item OS/390, z/OS iconv
1345 B<iconv> is supported as both a shell utility and a C RTL routine.
1346 See also the iconv(1) and iconv(3) manual pages.
1350 On OS/390 or z/OS see L<locale> for information on locales. The L10N files
1351 are in F</usr/nls/locale>. $Config{d_setlocale} is 'define' on OS/390
1366 This pod document contains literal Latin 1 characters and may encounter
1367 translation difficulties. In particular one popular nroff implementation
1368 was known to strip accented characters to their unaccented counterparts
1369 while attempting to view this document through the B<pod2man> program
1370 (for example, you may see a plain C<y> rather than one with a diaeresis
1371 as in E<yuml>). Another nroff truncated the resultant manpage at
1372 the first occurrence of 8 bit characters.
1374 Not all shells will allow multiple C<-e> string arguments to perl to
1375 be concatenated together properly as recipes 0, 2, 4, 5, and 6 might
1380 L<perllocale>, L<perlfunc>, L<perlunicode>, L<utf8>.
1384 L<http://anubis.dkuug.dk/i18n/charmaps>
1386 L<http://www.unicode.org/>
1388 L<http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr16/>
1390 L<http://www.wps.com/projects/codes/>
1391 B<ASCII: American Standard Code for Information Infiltration> Tom Jennings,
1394 B<The Unicode Standard, Version 3.0> The Unicode Consortium, Lisa Moore ed.,
1395 ISBN 0-201-61633-5, Addison Wesley Developers Press, February 2000.
1397 B<CDRA: IBM - Character Data Representation Architecture -
1398 Reference and Registry>, IBM SC09-2190-00, December 1996.
1400 "Demystifying Character Sets", Andrea Vine, Multilingual Computing
1401 & Technology, B<#26 Vol. 10 Issue 4>, August/September 1999;
1402 ISSN 1523-0309; Multilingual Computing Inc. Sandpoint ID, USA.
1404 B<Codes, Ciphers, and Other Cryptic and Clandestine Communication>
1405 Fred B. Wrixon, ISBN 1-57912-040-7, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers,
1408 L<http://www.bobbemer.com/P-BIT.HTM>
1409 B<IBM - EBCDIC and the P-bit; The biggest Computer Goof Ever> Robert Bemer.
1413 15 April 2001: added UTF-8 and UTF-EBCDIC to main table, pvhp.
1417 Peter Prymmer pvhp@best.com wrote this in 1999 and 2000
1418 with CCSID 0819 and 0037 help from Chris Leach and
1419 AndrE<eacute> Pirard A.Pirard@ulg.ac.be as well as POSIX-BC
1420 help from Thomas Dorner Thomas.Dorner@start.de.
1421 Thanks also to Vickie Cooper, Philip Newton, William Raffloer, and
1422 Joe Smith. Trademarks, registered trademarks, service marks and
1423 registered service marks used in this document are the property of
1424 their respective owners.