Converting files between code pages

This topic discusses the conversion and tagging of files between code pages.

z/OS is an EBCDIC platform. It has devices that are configured for EBCDIC; it also has programs that are compiled to handle the EBCDIC encoding of characters. If you implement Enhanced ASCII or exploit Unicode Services, the basic EBCDIC nature of a z/OS platform remains. For example, the z/OS shell and utilities continue to be EBCDIC programs. However, if C programs have been compiled as ASCII, the EBCDIC nature can be partially hidden.

This topic discusses the conversion and tagging of files between various code pages. Before Enhanced ASCII and Unicode Services were available, you could use iconv to convert characters from one code page set to another. The converted text is written to standard input (stdout). See z/OS XL C/C++ Programming Guide for more information about the supported code sets.

C programs that have been compiled as ASCII use ASCII locales. These ASCII locales are produced by using the -A option of localedef.