Agree 100% re: using the conversion functions. As I think I said in one of my later replies, I would guess that IBM will reject my “idea” as “function already available in current release”, and I am OK with that. My bad for not thoroughly RTFM.
Peter From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Phil Smith III Sent: Monday, January 5, 2026 10:56 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Please vote for COBOL "idea" for reverse character translation This thread looks to have played out, but I wanted to add that I would not love raising an error on a MOVE. It just feels like that's at the wrong level; it's not a data exception per se (well, I guess it COULD force one, but that would be kinda bogus) and so what is it? In other words, here's a program that works 99% of the time, but fails occasionally because you're throwing user input at it and hey, somebody managed to mix characters. That's going to be a nightmare to document, and users are going to get it wrong. Far better IMHO to force the user to call a conversion function which itself has documented failure modes, which they'll (hopefully) test for (and if they don't, then it's on them). Not sure I'm getting my point across here; it's sort of like "This instruction works except on alternate Thursdays"--nobody is going to grok that properly and handle it cleanly. Sounds like you have a solution, anyway; just had to get this in there. Unicode/UTF-n are amazing achievements, but going between UTF-n and EBCDIC is always fraught! -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <mailto:[email protected]> On Behalf Of Farley, Peter Sent: Friday, January 2, 2026 6:59 PM To: mailto:[email protected] Subject: Re: Please vote for COBOL "idea" for reverse character translation I personally would be satisfied for the runtime logic to just raise an LE error condition and dump for any sort of conversion-stopping error. So long as normal “character not defined in the requested EBCDIC CCSID so make it SUB in the output” issues are just done without asking, I am perfectly willing to scan the result for SUB characters myself and use application-dependent error logic to handle or ignore the result as needed. -- This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
