String type

The String type has several properties.

This has the following properties:

Character Set. Choose from ASCII or EBCDIC (not available for ustring type (Unicode)).
Default. The default value for a column. This is used for data written by a Generate stage. It also supplies the value to substitute for a column that causes an error (whether written or read).
Export EBCDIC as ASCII. Select this to specify that EBCDIC characters are written as ASCII characters (not available for ustring type (Unicode)).
Is link field. Selected to indicate that a column holds the length of another, variable-length column of the record or of the tag value of a tagged record field.
Import ASCII as EBCDIC. Select this to specify that ASCII characters are read as EBCDIC characters (not available for ustring type (Unicode)).
Field max width. The maximum number of bytes in a column represented as a string. Enter a number. This is useful where you are storing numbers as text. If you are using a fixed-width character set, you can calculate the length exactly. If you are using a variable-length character set, calculate an adequate maximum width for your fields. The property applies to fields of all data types except date, time, timestamp, and raw; and record, subrecord, or tagged if they contain at least one field of this type.
Field width. The number of bytes in a column represented as a string. Enter a number. This is useful where you are storing numbers as text. If you are using a fixed-width character set, you can calculate the number of bytes exactly. If it's a variable length encoding, base your calculation on the width and frequency of your variable-width characters. Applies to fields of all data types except date, time, timestamp, and raw; and record, subrecord, or tagged if they contain at least one field of this type.
Pad char. Specifies the pad character used when strings or numeric values are written to an external string representation. Enter a character (single-byte for strings, can be multi-byte for ustrings) or choose null or space. The pad character is used when the external string representation is larger than required to hold the written field. In this case, the external string is filled with the pad character to its full length. Space is the default. Applies to string, ustring, and numeric data types and record, subrecord, or tagged types if they contain at least one field of this type.