Converting to or from UTF-8 (Unicode) representation

You can implicitly convert alphabetic or national data to UTF-8 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 UTF-8.

You can explicitly convert UTF-16 data to UTF-8 data and UTF-8 data to alphanumeric data by using the DISPLAY-OF intrinsic function. You can also explicitly convert UTF-8 data to UTF-16 data by using the NATIONAL-OF intrinsic function. When using the DISPLAY-OF intrinsic function to convert UTF-16 to UTF-8, you must specify an output code page of 1208.