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Question:
Do I convert EBCDIC "Hello" to ASCII using QASCII
translation table then encode the results to Base64?

Or do I need "Hello" in ASCII stored on the System i

Or are these really the same thing?

I think (I have tried so many different things) I tried to
translate "ABCDEFGH" to ASCII using translation table QASCII
then ran the results through the Base64 conversion, I still
got a different value then the Web Decoding came up with???

I am so confused!!

John


-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Wilt [mailto:charles.wilt@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2008 2:20 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Base64 question

And so, if whoever is going to do the decode is expecting
ASCII, then your
RPG program first needs to convert the EBCDIC to ASCII and
then do the
base64 encoding.

Charles


On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 1:39 PM, Scott Klement
<midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

Hi John,

The purpose behind base64 is to allow binary data to be
sent through a
text transfer medium. For example, if you have a JPEG
picture and want
to send it through e-mail, you have a problem. Pictures
aren't made up
of letters and numbers, instead the actual bit values of
the bytes
control what the picture looks like. However, e-mail was
designed for
text. If you send e-mail from a computer running ASCII to
a computer
running EBCDIC, all of the bytes in the message will be
translated from
ASCII to EBCDIC -- so a picture would become a corrupt
mess.

Base64 is a solution to that problem. Base64 takes the
actual bit
values that make up a string of data, and converts them to
to a
text-safe format. The text can then be translated to
ASCII/EBCDIC/Unicode, whatever, it doesn't matter. When
it's decoded,
the data will be decoded back to the exact same binary
values that you
started with.

That being the case, a text string encoded on an EBCDIC
platform will
CERTAINLY encode to a different string than a text string
encoded on an
ASCII platform! Of course it will, since the underlying
bit values are
different.

If you take the string 'Hello' and encode it on an EBCDIC
platform,
you've encoded x'C885939396' into base64. When you decode
it on an
ASCII platform, it'll decode to x'C885939396' -- which is
NOT the word
Hello in ASCII (If it did that, there'd be no point to
base64) but
rather, it's the exact same bit values you started with...

Hope you understand.



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