Re: AS/400 file returns Garbage in VARPG

Hello Jim,

You wrote:
>Hmm.. you are right.  The CCSID for the fields are 65535.  The CCSID
>for the CUSTOMER file which works is 500.

CCSID(65535) means the data is treated as Hex which means that
CCSID-aware applications will not convert the data.

CCSID(500) is International EBCDIC which shares many of the same
codepoints as CCSID(37).  This file works because data from your
AS/400 native jobs are converted automatically by the OS from the job
CCSID -- probably 37 -- to CCSID(500) before writing to the file.
The reverse occurs when reading from the file.

VARPG can process the CCSID(500) file as you expect because it knows
the file CCSID and can convert to the PC codepage (probably 819 or
1272)

VARPG is working correctly.  In the first instance you told it not to
convert by specifying (or defaulting) to CCSID(65535).  In the second
instance you told it to convert.

>I changed the CCSID to 37 for the file and it works fine now.  Of
>course I did some checking in test environment first to make sure
>changing the CCSID wouldn't break anything in the JBA system :)

Presuming that there is nothing special about the data in the files
then changing the CCSID from 65535 to 37 will cause no problems
because the data in the file is probably CCSID 37 anyway -- since you
seem to be based in the USA your default job CCSID will probably be
37.

You should probably check the value of the QCCSID system value.  If
that is 65535 then change it to 37 (or whatever is appropriate for
you system).  The OS tries to avoid problems caused by the system
value being 65535 by using a separate default job CCSID.  Read the
help text for CHGJOB if you wnat to know more.

Regards,
Simon Coulter.

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