Addendum: In character and hex on a 3270 terminal, your MOVE (broken into two
parts to fit in an 80-byte record with COBOL format) would look like this (each
of the non-Romance-character words are two bytes per character):
000109 MOVE U'Latin, JØJaJccJ½c}Ý}½, español, français, '
44444444444DDEC4E7D8A8964D8D8D88DB8DBDB648A98499648989488A6474
00000000000465504D31395B010111331830A08B05271963B069158192B0D0
---------------------------------------------------------------------
000110 TO UtF-8-STRING
4444444444444ED4EAC6F6EEDCDC4444444444444444444444444444444444
00000000000003604360802399570000000000000000000000000000000000
---------------------------------------------------------------------
000111 MOVE U'Latin, ónó¨ó¨ó¼ó]ó¾óÝóÐ, PsO©PjPyO©PrP¡. '
444444DDEC4E7D8A8964C9CBCBCBCBCBCBCA64DADBD9DADBD9DA4474444444
000000465504D31395B0E5EBEBE7EDE9EAECB07264717864797AB0D0000000
---------------------------------------------------------------------
000112 TO UtF-8-STRING
4444444444444ED4EAC6F6EEDCDC4444444444444444444444444444444444
00000000000003604360802399570000000000000000000000000000000000
I don’t know of any terminal emulator that lets you type or even paste those
UTF-8 characters, but if you could that’s what it would look like. Maybe if
the emulator allows CCSID’s other than EBCDIC to be typed? Not sure that is
available.
Peter
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of
Farley, Peter
Sent: Friday, January 2, 2026 9:02 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Please vote for COBOL "idea" for reverse character translation
MOVE U'Latin, русский, español, français, Ελληνικά, עִברִית. ' TO UtF-8-STRING
Where UtF-8-STRING is defined with PIC U(length). UTF-8 literals in IBM COBOL
are U’utf-chars-or-\Unnnn-escapes’. I agree, the less said about UTF-EBCDIC the
better.
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MOVE U'Latin, русский, español, français, Ελληνικά, עִברִית. '
TO UtF-8-STRING
Where UtF-8-STRING is defined with PIC U(length).
UTF-8 literals in IBM COBOL are U’utf-chars-or-\Unnnn-escapes’.
I agree, the less said about UTF-EBCDIC the better.
Peter
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of
Paul Gilmartin
Sent: Friday, January 2, 2026 8:52 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Please vote for COBOL "idea" for reverse character translation
On Fri, 2 Jan 2026 18:09:28 -0500, Phil Smith III wrote:
>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.
> ...
How can a programmer code a (PIC U) constant or initial value?
I imagine something like:
MOVE 'Latin, русский, español, français, Ελληνικά, עִברִית. '
TO UtF-8-STRING;
Details? Would it be legible in compiler SYSPRINT?
The following works in Regina-Rexx, but hardly practical:
say ,
'4C6174696E2C20D180D183D181D181D0BAD0B8D0B92C2065737061C3B16F6C2C206672616EC3A76169732C20CE95CEBBCEBBCEB7CEBDCEB9CEBACEAC2C20D7A2D6B4D791D7A8D6B4D799D7AA2E20'x
Are there CCSID 1210-savvy terminals and or authoring tools??
Until there are, the less said about UTF-EBCDIC the better.
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