Enhanced ASCII enables users to deal with files that are in both ASCII and EBCDIC format. z/OS® is an EBCDIC platform. The z/OS UNIX shells and utilities are configured as EBCDIC programs. That is, characters are coded in the EBCDIC code set. Before z/OS Version 1 Release 2, applications that ran on z/OS UNIX had to exist in EBCDIC form, and expected text data to be stored in EBCDIC form. If you wanted to convert files from EBCDIC to ASCII or ASCII to EBCDIC, you needed to use iconv. With Enhanced ASCII, you can deal with applications and their data in your choice of ASCII or EBCDIC code sets. z/OS UNIX still operates as an EBCDIC system, but it can automatically convert the data from ASCII to EBCDIC and back as necessary to complete commands and tasks.