RE: Vertical bar translation

[qsrvbas@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Tom Liotta)]

midrange-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>   7. RE: Vertical bar translation (Jones, John (US))
>
>To see the hex (ASCII) codes on the PC:
>
>- Save the file somewhere.
>- Start a command prompt.
>- Change to the directory where the file is.
>- Enter
>  debug filename.txt
>- You'll get a "-" prompt.
>- Enter 
>  d
>  (for Dump)
>- The 1st 128 bytes of the file will be displayed.  Note on the left
>side the indicator xxxx:0100 through xxxx:0170; that's the offset into
>the file.  The middle portion of the dump is the hex/ASCII codes for the
>characters.  The right side contains the ASCII characters themselves.

And right here is where Rob's issue probably would become first visible. What 
he will see will be the characters according to the character set defined for 
him in that session on that device. This has no necessary relationship to a 
character set defined for a remote customer or partner at a different location 
on a different system. Without transmitting appropriate CCSID or code 
page/character set, he has no way to influence what someone else sees.

This can be just as true when another developer views the exact same data on a 
PC sitting on Rob's desk next to Rob's PC if that other PC has a different 
setup.

Not too many years ago, this was commonly seen in CL programs when one 
programmer would type for example a vertical bar to indicate concatenation in 
an expression instead of using the *CAT operator. Another developer would open 
that source member in a different session or the member would be printed on a 
printer that used a different character set setting, and the vertical bar would 
appear as an exclamation point or some other character. Same bit pattern, same 
code page, different character representation.

Nearly every new CL program nowadays has *CAT, *BCAT, *TCAT, etc., instead of 
the special characters.

Tom Liotta

-- 
Tom Liotta
The PowerTech Group, Inc.
19426 68th Avenue South
Kent, WA 98032
Phone  253-872-7788 x313
Fax    253-872-7904
http://www.powertech.com


__________________________________________________________________
McAfee VirusScan Online from the Netscape Network.
Comprehensive protection for your entire computer. Get your free trial today!
http://channels.netscape.com/ns/computing/mcafee/index.jsp?promo=393397

Get AOL Instant Messenger 5.1 free of charge.  Download Now!
http://aim.aol.com/aimnew/Aim/register.adp?promo=380455