What you really would need is an attribute on the variable definition (in addition to a compile option) which tells if a variable is BIGENDIAN or LITTLEENDIAN or in case of a char variable or string, what encoding is has. PL/1, AFAIK, has all that.
If you mix BIGENDIAN and LITTLEENDIAN variables in an expression, there is no problem; they can be processed together, and each one is stored in its proper format. When assigning char strings or single chars of different encoding, the compiler provides the translation. The compiler option tells the default, if no ENDIANNESS or encoding scheme has been specified on the variable definition. HTH, kind regards Bernd Am 14.06.2017 um 16:30 schrieb John McKown:
This is just a kind of "speculation" on my part. It is to avoid problems when doing transfers of data between z/OS and Intel based platforms. I.e. when I want to do a binary transfer of a file from Linux or <blech> Windows to z/OS for processing, perhaps due to the complexity of the data and the "non z/OS end" people being uncooperative about translating their data to something like non-binary XML or JSON. I would like a way to specify that either specific integer variables be in "Little-Endian" format instead of the IBM z's "Big Endian". It seems to me that this should be "simple" by just using the "Load Reverse" and "Store Revere" instructions instead of the normal "Load" and "Store" instructions. There are 2, 4, & 8 byte variants of these instructions. In addition to the above, I am wondering about the reading/writing/processing of character data in ASCII instead of EBCDIC. I know of the ASCII compile option (which I can't review right now due the the abominable KC being unavailable right now - I am really PISSED at IBM for this unreliability). Well, enough on that digression. Does the ASCII compile option allow for reading, writing, and processing of ASCII char data? Of course, that I'd really like is a "simple" (not iconv) way to intermix ASCII & EBCDIC characters. And, yes, I know that I'm opening up a whole can of mega-worms with this "easy desire".
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