Micro Focus Extensions for Double-Byte Character Support

 

The Micro Focus Extensions for Double-Byte Character Support is the additional facility we provide as the programming solution for environments using 16-bit coding schemes (DBCS). This facility incorporates every implementation of Japanese language support from earlier Micro Focus products.

(MIA) If you wish your program to comply with the Multivendor Integration Architecture Standard or to be compatible with IBM VS COBOL II, COBOL/370 or IBM SAA you should use the DBCS Support defined earlier in the topic Double-Byte Character Set Support.

8-bit codes used by your COBOL system are referred to as the Single-Byte Character Set (SBCS). 16-bit codes, each character occupying a pair of adjacent bytes are referred as the Double-Byte Character Set (DBCS).

Micro Focus Extensions for Double-Byte Character Support is enabled by the NCHAR or JAPANESE Compiler directives.

When the Micro Focus Extensions for Double-Byte Character Support is enabled, the support defined in the topic Double-Byte Character Set Support is modified. In particular, in this chapter MOVE operations from SBCS to DBCS data items perform SBCS to DBCS conversion.

The classes NCHAR and JAPANESE, and NCHAR-EDITED and JAPANESE-EDITED are synonyms and interchangeable. In this chapter, reference to the class or category NCHAR or the category NCHAR-EDITED is equivalent to the class or category JAPANESE or the category JAPANESE-EDITED respectively.