RE: SQL Misbehaving

[Buck Calabro <Buck.Calabro@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Explain "Are there characters below x'40' "

Characters below x'40' are reserved as special workstation control
characters.

Here's a snippet from a customer master file using CPYF master *print
outfmt(*hex):

*...+... 1 ...+... 2 ...+... 3 ...+... 4
0000000000000 0030}00000000Changed by tr
FFFFFFFFFFFFF4FFFFDFFFFFFFFC88988848A4A9
0000000000000000300000000003815754028039

The first 13 characters are the key (all zeroes - hex 'F0').  Column 14 is a
status code (blank - hex '40').  The next 5 are a bill-to-number (00300- -
hex 'F0F0F3F0D0.  The 'D' indicates a negative number.)  Moving out to
column 28 begins the name.  Hex 'C3' is the letter 'C', x'88' is the letter
'h', etc.  If I did something bizarre like put a hex '21' in column 28, the
machine might (depending on the program) interpret that x'21' as a
workstation control (in this case, High Intensity.)

About the only time you expect to see characters less than x'40' is in a
packed or binary number:

*...+... 1 ...+... 2

44444000000000004444
00000000F00F0F0F0000

Starting at column 6 is a packed number (all zeroes - hex '0000000F'  The
'F' indicates a positive number.)

So, if you had a program that accidentally moved a packed field onto a
character field you could get strange results trying to display the name
field which now contains control characters.
  --buck