Converting national to UTF-8 and UTF-8 to alphanumeric (DISPLAY-OF)

You can use one of the two methods described in this topic to convert a national to UTF- 8, depending on the sending operand.

About this task

When you use a USAGE NATIONAL sending operand and a USAGE UTF‑8 receiving operand, a MOVE statement automatically converts the data from UTF‑8 to national.
For example:
```
01 NAT-SEND PIC N(100).

01 UTF8-RECV PIC U(100).

...

MOVE N"abcd" TO NAT-SEND

MOVE NAT-SEND TO UTF8-RECV
```
NAT-SEND contains hex "0061006200630064" padded with hex "0020" (spaces). Upon execution of the last MOVE statement, UTF8-RECV contains hex "61626364" padded with hex "20" (spaces).
When you store UTF‑8 data at runtime in an alphanumeric item (USAGE DISPLAY), you can use a national sending operand (USAGE NATIONAL) and an alphanumeric receiving operand (USAGE DISPLAY) and invoke the DISPLAY‑OF intrinsic function to convert the data to UTF‑8 format.
For example:
```
01 NAT-SEND PIC N(100).

01 ALPHA-RECV PIC X(100).

...

MOVE N"abcd" TO NAT-SEND

MOVE FUNCTION DISPLAY-OF(NAT-SEND 1208) TO ALPHA-RECV
```
NAT-SEND contains hex "0061006200630064" padded with hex "0020" (spaces). Upon execution of the last MOVE statement, ALPHA-RECV contains hex "61626364" padded with hex "40" (EBCDIC spaces).

Finally, converting UTF-8 to alphanumeric always requires use of the DISPLAY-OF intrinsic function.
For example:
```
01 UTF8-SEND PIC U(100).

01 ALPHA-SEND PIC X(100).

01 ALPHA-RECV PIC X(100).

...

MOVE FUNCTION DISPLAY-OF(UTF8-SEND 1140) TO ALPHA-RECV

MOVE FUNCTION DISPLAY-OF(ALPHA-SEND 1140) TO ALPHA-RECV
```

Related references
DISPLAY-OF (Enterprise COBOL for z/OS® Language Reference)