I think the term “national characters” has its origins in the COBOL standard.
The “special” characters can produce some interesting output. I once had to deal with a Turkish customer who used Top Secret. User resources classes should begin with X’5B’, which in CP 1026 (Latin-5/Turkish) is İ. We would get screen shots and printouts that caused us to double take until we got used to it. Sent from my iPhone > On Jul 11, 2023, at 06:00, Bob Bridges <[email protected]> wrote: > > It was never clear to me why the term "national" was picked in the first > place. Although I worked for Volvo 14 years (jag Verkade på Volvo > Lastvagnar fyrtio år) and on the Swedish side those keys produced characters > in the Swedish alphabet - I don't remember which ones exactly, but probably > something like Ä, Å and Ö. > > --- > Bob Bridges, [email protected], cell 336 382-7313 > > /* Vegetables aren't food. Vegetables are what food eats. -from Shoe, > 1999-10-08 */ > > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of > Peter Relson > Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2023 08:05 > > The ID (now CDD) folks had years ago made us refer to @,$,# as "special > characters" rather than as "national characters". > > It is disappointing that they did not change the publications to be > consistent with that directive. By all means point out the discrepancies > that you spot. > > I'll bet that any change would be from "national" to "special" (not the > other way around). I have no idea what term they will decide to use for the > JCL characters that they currently call special. > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
