Re: CSVR4 and UTF-8 -- RPG400-L

Greg,

CCSID is an IBM thing. The CCSID of a streamfile is nothing more than a label on the outside, telling you what's inside.

When files come in from outside, they have no label, so they get a default label. That default label is a setting somewhere in NetServer. In your case it appears to be set at 819 - ASCII.

If you know the contents of a file are in UTF-8, it is best to change the attribute CCSID to 1208.

Joep Beckeringh

Op 5 mei 2020 om 15:06 heeft Greg Wilburn <gwilburn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> het volgende geschreven:

Vern,

That is exactly correct... the CCSID of the file is 819. I'm not sure how that is assigned other than the JOB ccsid that retrieves the file via FTP (I have a CLP that runs a script saved in DDS text).

These are orders coming from a very popular website platform... an app installed on the platform extracts orders and pushes them to our FTP server for pickup. The app has a function called normalize_text() to remove characters. Unfortunately, you can't apply it to the entire tab-delimited string. It has to be applied to each-and-every field we've selected for download.

EASY400 has a utility called CVT101 that contains StmfCvt to convert from one to another, but that likely won't help.

I was hoping for an "easier" solution.

My service program (someone helped me with this too) uses %XLATE against a constant that contains the hex representation of many non-display characters.

dcl-c nondsp const(x'000102030405060708090A0B0C0D0E0F-
101112131415161718191A1B1C1D1E1F-
202122232425262728292A2B2C2D2E2F-
303132333435363738393A3B3C3D3E3F-
41');
dcl-s space char(%size(nondsp));
dcl-s result varchar(1024);

result = %trim(inchar);
result = %xlate(nondsp:space:result);

return result;

I think I also tried the SQL Translate() function, but RPG seemed a bit faster.

Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: RPG400-L [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Vernon Hamberg
Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2020 2:59 AM
To: RPG programming on IBM i <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: CSVR4 and UTF-8

Thomas - take a look at U+2018 and U+2019 and U+201C and U+201D. U+2019
in that page - a great site - is RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK.

U+2018 ‘ e2 80 98 LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK
U+2019 ’ e2 80 99 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK
U+201A ‚ e2 80 9a SINGLE LOW-9 QUOTATION MARK
U+201B ‛ e2 80 9b SINGLE HIGH-REVERSED-9 QUOTATION MARK
U+201C “ e2 80 9c LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK
U+201D ” e2 80 9d RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK

These are among several characters that don't exist in EBCDIC - an
ellipsis or em dash. We had run into this challenge with text entered on
an iPhone app. And these can come form the Autocorrect options in MS
Word or Outlook.

I ended up using SQL on i to import the text, and it puts X'3F' where it
encounters characters it can't convert.

Greg asks about recommendations - maybe the only 1 to retain the
characters would be to use 1208 (UTF-8) as the CCSID - of course, that
can't be done without a whole lot of work.

And IBM do not provide conversion tables between UTF-8 and EBCDIC - how
could you, at least in their present form.

Does iconv have options to convert these typographer (another descriptor
of these things) characters into something like EBCDIC?

Cheers
Vern

On 5/5/2020 1:02 AM, Thomas Raddatz wrote:
I do not know what you mean with ' right single quotation mark '. I assume it is a ACUTE ACCENT or a GRAVE ACCENT according to UTF8 table https://www.utf8-chartable.de/.

I did a brief test with service program CSVR4 and the following test data on our IBM i:

"ABC123","Scott Klement","123 Sesame St","Milwaukee, WI","USA","","53132-1234",1000.00
"ABC123","Bärbel Böhm","Some Street","Some City","Germany","","40721",1000.00
"ABC123","`Jürgen` ´Bärbeißer´","Some Street","Some City","Germany","","40721",1000.00

The report produced by CSVDEMO shows the result expected:

File . . . . . : QSYSPRT
Control . . . . .
Find . . . . . .
*...+....1....+....2....+....3...
Acct Name
---------- ---------------------
ABC123 Scott Klement
ABC123 Bärbel Böhm
ABC123 `Jürgen` ´Bärbeißer´

The German Umlaute as well as the ACUTE ACCENT and GRAVE ACCENT are correctly printed. Hence I assume that CSVR4 works fine.

We do not use CSVR4, so a brief test is all I can do.

Did you check the CCSID of your inpput? Is it 1208 (= UTF8)?

Thomas.

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: RPG400-L [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Im Auftrag von Greg Wilburn
Gesendet: Montag, 4. Mai 2020 16:24
An: RPG400-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Betreff: CSVR4 and UTF-8

I have a program that is using the CSVR4 service programs to read tab delimited text files that we pull down from a website. The site is using UTF-8 character set... occasionally, we have issues with character translation.

Example: x'e2 80 99' (right single quotation mark) makes a real mess of the customer's name.

I have a utility that removes non-display characters, but in this case I need to keep the character.

Any recommendations on changes that could be made to the process that would eliminate some of these translation issues?

Thanks,
Greg

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