Visual COBOL has built-in country support for EBCDIC <-> ASCII character set translations.
When you use the _CODESET library routine to convert a string between EBCDIC and ASCII, the MFCODESET environment variable manages and selects the appropriate EBCDIC <-> ASCII translation for your applications, based on its specified value or default behavior.
The table below shows the possible MFCODESET values (also known as country codes), and their corresponding EBCDIC Coded Character Set Identifiers (CCSIDs) and languages.
Originally, this table reflected the country codes established by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), but it has since been expanded to include Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) extensions, as well as MFCODESET values for UNIX database applications.
Support is provided for the following character set translations:
For Euro enablement (€), prefix your MFCODESET value with "E".
|
Country Code (MFCODESET) |
EBCDIC CCSIDs | Language |
|---|---|---|
| AUTOMATIC
AUTO |
Operating system default - sets country code based on CBL_GET_OS_INFO
This setting is only applicable on Windows platforms. |
|
| DEFAULT | Set to 0437 (US English) on UNIX. | |
| 0031 | 37, 1140 | Dutch |
| 0033 | 297, 1147 | French |
| 0034 | 284, 1145 | Spanish |
| 0039 | 280, 1144 | Italian |
| 0043 | 273, 1141 | German (Austrian) |
| 0044 | 285, 1146 | UK English |
| 0045 | 277, 1142 | Danish |
| 0046 | 278, 1143 | Swedish |
| 0047 | 277, 1142 | Norwegian |
| 0049 | 273, 1141 | German |
| 0066 | 838 | Thai Extended |
| 0081† | 930 (290, 300) | * Japanese Katakana Extended |
| 0082 | 933 (833, 834) | *Korean |
| 0086 | 13676 (836, 837) | *Simplified Chinese |
| 0351 | 37, 1140 | Portuguese |
| 0358 | 278, 1143 | Finnish |
| 0420 | 420 | Arabic
See Arabic Support Considerations below. |
| 0437 | 37, 1140 | US English |
| 0500 | 500, 1148 | International (Latin 1) |
| 0886 | 937 (37, 835) | *Traditional Chinese |
| 0930 † | 930 (290, 300) | *Japanese Katakana Extended |
| 0939 † | 939 (1027, 300) | *Japanese Latin Extended |
| 9122 † | 9122 (290, 300) | *Japanese Katakana |
Character sets marked with an asterisk (*) are capable of mixed single-byte and double-byte character translation. EBCDIC CCSIDs in these rows indicate the mixed-byte CCSID first, followed by the single-byte, then double-byte Code Page Global Identifiers (CPGIDs) in parenthesis.
MFCODESETs marked with a dagger (†) are based on the Japanese International Standard (JIS) X 0208 1978 revision. Additional translation tables are available based on the Japanese International Standard (JIS) X 0208 1990 revision (and are taken from IBM's translation tables CCSID 300 - 941); to use these tables instead of the default ones, set the MFCODESET_DBCS environment variable to 941.
Other EBCDIC CCSIDs in parentheses reflect a 'non-Euro, Euro' pair for appropriate country codes.
If you set an invalid country code, the DEFAULT country code setting is used.
For Windows and UNIX database applications accessing a UNIX database created with single-byte character sets 819 or 923, use the following table:
| Country Code
(MFCODESET) |
EBCDIC CCSIDs | Languages |
|---|---|---|
| 1140 | 37,1140 | Dutch US English Portuguese |
| 1141 | 273,1141 | German (Austrian) German |
| 1142 | 277,1142 | Danish Norwegian |
| 1143 | 278,1143 | Swedish Finnish |
| 1144 | 280,1144 | Italian |
| 1145 | 284,1145 | Spanish |
| 1146 | 285,1146 | UK English |
| 1147 | 297,1147 | French |
| 1148 | 500,1148 | International (Latin 1) |