General description

The following characteristics help define the rules used by DBCS to represent extended characters:

Each DBCS character consists of 2 bytes.
Each SBCS character consists of 1 byte.
There are no DBCS control characters.
The codes are within the ranges defined in the table, which shows the valid DBCS code for the DBCS blank. You cannot have a DBCS blank in a simple symbol, in the stem of a compound variable, or in a label.
Table 1. DBCS ranges
Byte EBCDIC
1st X'41' to X'FE'
2nd X'41' to X'FE'
DBCS blank X'4040'
DBCS alphanumeric and special symbols
A DBCS contains double-byte representation of alphanumeric and special symbols corresponding to those of the Single-Byte Character Set (SBCS). In EBCDIC, the first byte of a double-byte alphanumeric or special symbol is X'42' and the second is the same hex code as the corresponding EBCDIC code.

Here are some examples:
X'42C1' is an EBCDIC double-byte A
X'4281' is an EBCDIC double-byte a
X'427D' is an EBCDIC double-byte quote
No case translation
In general, there is no concept of lowercase and uppercase in DBCS.

Notational conventions

This appendix uses the following notational conventions:

DBCS character             ->    .A .B .C .D
SBCS character             ->    a b c d e
DBCS blank                 ->    '. '
EBCDIC shift-out (X'0E')   ->    <
EBCDIC shift-in  (X'0F')   ->    >

Note: In EBCDIC, the shift-out (SO) and shift-in (SI) characters distinguish DBCS characters from SBCS characters.