Converting to or from national (Unicode) representation

You can implicitly convert alphabetic, alphanumeric, UTF-8, DBCS, or integer data to national data by using the MOVE statement. Implicit conversions also take place in other COBOL statements, such as IF statements that compare an alphanumeric data item with a data item that has USAGE NATIONAL.

You can explicitly convert to and from national data items by using the intrinsic functions NATIONAL-OF and DISPLAY-OF, respectively. By using these intrinsic functions, you can specify a code page for the conversion that is different from the code page that is in effect with the CODEPAGE compiler option.