Showing my ignorance of COBOL: Does a MOVE from EBCDIC->UTF-8 mean "Here's a variable defined as n EBCDIC characters, please move it to this other variable defined as (at least) n UTF-8 characters"?
If so, as Gil intimated, I wouldn't say there "is no technical reason". I can think of at least one problem: A UTF-8 string that contains characters from multiple UTF-8 blocks. For example, x'52' in EBCDIC 410 (Cyrillic) is a њ; in 420 (Arabic) it's ؤ. There's no reason a UTF-8 variable cannot contain њؤ but if it does, you can't convert back to EBCDIC. That's far from a rare issue--every EBCDIC code page has overlapping characters (if it didn't, it wouldn't be needed). -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Mike Schwab Sent: Friday, January 2, 2026 5:48 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Please vote for COBOL "idea" for reverse character translation How about character 160 inverted Exclamation mark? On Fri, Jan 2, 2026 at 3:05 PM Paul Gilmartin <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Fri, 2 Jan 2026 18:56:13 +0000, Farley, Peter wrote: > > >Currently Enterprise COBOL allows PIC X alphanumeric EBCDIC group and > >elementary items to MOVE to UTF-8 (PIC U) and NATIONAL (PIC N) group and > >elementary items with automatic character set translation, but the reverse > >MOVE is not allowed. There is no technical reason why the reverse MOVE > >should not be allowed, since the character set translation logic is already > >in place for a PIC X MOVE into PIC U and PIC N. > > ... > I suspect this uses internally something similar to: > <https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/zos/3.2.0?topic=functions-iconv-code-conv > ersion> > > How should COBOL handle/report all the errors described there, some of > which occur only in the "reverse" (from U) direction? > > >I have a bit more detail on the subject in the "idea" summary, please read > >those details at the "ideas" page and vote for it. > > > >https://ideas.ibm.com/ideas/COBOLVUE-I-427 > > > >TIA for your votes. > > - > gil > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send > email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
