Processing data in an international environment

Use these COBOL facilities to code and compile programs that process national data:

• Data types and literals:
  • Character data types, defined with the USAGE NATIONAL clause and a PICTURE clause that defines data of category national, national-edited, or numeric-edited
  • Numeric data types, defined with the USAGE NATIONAL clause and a PICTURE clause that defines a numeric data item (a national decimal item) or an external floating-point data item (a national floating-point item)
  • National literals, specified with literal prefix N or NX
  • Figurative constant ALL national-literal
  • Figurative constants QUOTE, SPACE, HIGH-VALUE, LOW-VALUE, or ZERO, which have national character (UTF-16) values when used in national-character contexts
• The COBOL statements shown in the related reference below about COBOL statements and national data
• Intrinsic functions:
  • NATIONAL-OF to convert an alphanumeric or double-byte character set (DBCS) character string to USAGE NATIONAL (UTF-16)
  • DISPLAY-OF to convert a national character string to USAGE DISPLAY in a selected code page (EBCDIC, ASCII, EUC, or UTF-8)
  • The other intrinsic functions shown in the related reference below about intrinsic functions and national data
• The GROUP-USAGE NATIONAL clause to define groups that contain only USAGE NATIONAL data items and that behave like elementary category national items in most operations
• Compiler options:
  • CODEPAGE to specify the code page to use for alphanumeric and DBCS data in your program
  • NSYMBOL to control whether national or DBCS processing is used for the N symbol in literals and PICTURE clauses

You can also take advantage of implicit conversions of alphanumeric or DBCS data items to national representation. The compiler performs such conversions (in most cases) when you move these items to national data items, or compare these items with national data items.

UTF-8 is a variable-width Unicode encoding that is popular for data transmission and World Wide Web-related data formats such as HTML and JSON. Using UTF-8, you can develop software that will work with various national languages.

You can also take advantage of implicit conversions of alphanumeric or national data items to UTF-8 representation. The compiler performs such conversions (in most cases) when you move these items to UTF-8 data items, or compare these items with UTF-8 data items.