Converting to upper case

Dan,

The problem is not so much A-Z and a-z but that there are a whole lot
more letters than just a-z.  Latin small letter a grave should, for
instance, become Latin capital letter A with grave; Greek small letter
sigma a Greek capital letter sigma; Cyrillic small letter fita a
Cyrillic capital letter fita, etc.  Users outside of the United States
might not care for a routine that only handled the basic a-z...  These
other characters do exist in various code pages and should be correctly
cased.

And, yes, there are also straight code page problems with a-z.  In Japan
code page 290 has lower case a-z at different code points than that
found in most languages.  A XLATE done in an "English" RPG program
would cause Katakana characters to become A-Z and leave the CP 290 a-z
untouched.  Perhaps carrying it to an extreme, but XLATE using ASCII
input won't fly too well either.  Note that when I say XLATE I am
refering to XLATE using a fixed conversion mapping approach.  Obviously
XLATE could use dozens of different mapping tables based on the code
page in use; but then why not just use the Convert Case API and not
have to build all those mapping tables?

Bruce

>
>David, thanks for the reply!
>
>It seems to me that you can't get much more centralized than just using the
>XLATE opcode.
>
>What problems with the code page?  Do not the letters A-Z & a-z all translate
>the same way regardless of code page?  And if not, XLATE can't handle that but
>an API can?  Scary thought.  If you need a procedure to correct problems
>associated with code pages, don't you still have a problem with constants
>defined in the application?
>
>I know you were just using the code page as an example, but I'm hard pressed
>to think of another example where a straight "upper" or "lower" procedure
>would offer more flexibility over XLATE.
>
>It just seems to me that you're trying to fix a problem before one actually
>exists.
>
>Dan Bale
>IT - AS/400
>Handleman Company
>248-362-4400  Ext. 4952
>


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