On Sun, 18 Feb 2018 13:59:37 -0600, Paul Gilmartin <[email protected]> wrote:
>I believe "ASCII" can properly be used to refer to the first 128 characters in
>CCSID 819.
>including special characters. Informally, many use "ASCII" to refer to CCSID
>819 or
>other ISO-LATIN code pages.
I've been doing code page and translation table development and analysis since
about 1987. The term "ASCII" is just as ambiguous as "EBCDIC", as without
qualification each term only sets an expectation for the 8-bit encoding of a
somewhat vague set of glyphs.
The original 7-bit ASCII established a full 95-glyph character set that remains
invariant today among all 8-bit ASCII code pages. EBCDIC wasn't quite so
lucky, as it has only 56 invariant characters. It would be 82, but lower case
a-z can vary or be non-existent. If your data is composed of only the 56
common invariant characters, any EBCDIC and ASCII code page will suffice. All
"Latin" EBCDIC code pages will work for lower case a-z.
Here are the common invariant characters.
A-Z
0-9
space
. , + - / * ( ) < > = % : ; _ ? ' " &
If you also have:
@ ! ~ # $ ^ | [ ] { } `
then any ASCII code page will do, but you need to select your EBCDIC code page
carefully.
If you have any other glyph, then both ASCII and EBCDIC code pages must be
selected with care.
Alan Altmark
IBM Lab Services
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