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

Hi Thomas

I don't think UCS-2 is enough, once you open up to UTF-8, unless you have tight control of what is in the UTF-8 content. But the problems come when people include things from the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs section on that link you provided, or the Transport and Map Symbols section there. Those things WILL come in from web pages and apps on smart phones, because people are expecting that they can use them.

As to the x'000A', that is the ASCII code point for LF, expressed in UCS-2 - UCS2 always has a leading null for the code points derived from ASCII. So you ask,

CRLF in UCS-2 should be x'240D' (CR) and x'240A' (LF), shouldn't it?

The answer is not necessarily, CR CAN be x'000D', LF CAN be x'000A', as I understand it.

Vern

On 5/5/2020 1:22 PM, Tools/400 wrote:

Hi Vern,

One thing that could actually work is reading the data in ccsid UCS-2 (13488). That covers almost all character (or maybe even all characters) of UTF-8. Then Greg could replace e.g. the SINGLE QUOTATION MARKS by a charcater that can be translated to EBCDIC, for example a SINGLE QUOTE ('). He could do the same for other characters that have an almost equal counterpart in EBCDIC.

Once that is done, he could translate the UCS-2 string to EBCDIC. Basically that worked for me (quick and dirty test). But there is a problem I do not understand. The key is that %str() does not work for determing the length of the buffer returned by fgets().

Here are some examples returned by fgets():

EOL charcater: CRLF, o_CCSID=13488
00000     FFDE0022 00410042 00430031 00320033   - █ú... .â.{......
00010     0022002C 00222019 004200E4 00720062   - .........â.U.Ê.Â
00020     0065006C 20190020 004200F6 0068006D   - .Á.%.....â.6.Ç._
00030     0022002C 00220053 006F006D 00650020   - .......ë.?._.Á..
00040     00530074 00720065 00650074 0022002C   - .ë.È.Ê.Á.Á.È....
00050     00220053 006F006D 00650020 00430069   - ...ë.?._.Á...{.Ñ
00060     00740079 0022002C 00220047 00650072   - .È.`.......å.Á.Ê
00070     006D0061 006E0079 0022002C 00220022   - ._./.>.`........
00080     002C0022 00340030 00370032 00310022   - ................
00090     002C0031 00300030 0030002E 00300030   - ................
000A0     00000A00 40404040 40404040 40404040   - ....
          -- where does this byte belong to???
             and why is LF = x'000A'?

EOL character: LF, o_CCSID=13488
00000     FFDE0022 00410042 00430031 00320033   - █ú... .â.{......
00010     0022002C 00222019 004200E4 00720062   - .........â.U.Ê.Â
00020     0065006C 20190020 004200F6 0068006D   - .Á.%.....â.6.Ç._
00030     0022002C 00220053 006F006D 00650020   - .......ë.?._.Á..
00040     00530074 00720065 00650074 0022002C   - .ë.È.Ê.Á.Á.È....
00050     00220053 006F006D 00650020 00430069   - ...ë.?._.Á...{.Ñ
00060     00740079 0022002C 00220047 00650072   - .È.`.......å.Á.Ê
00070     006D0061 006E0079 0022002C 00220022   - ._./.>.`........
00080     002C0022 00340030 00370032 00310022   - ................
00090     002C0031 00300030 0030002E 00300030   - ................
000A0     000A0040 40404040 40404040 40404040   - ...
          ---- why is LF = x'000A'?

EOL character: CRLF, o_CCSID=0
00000     FFDE7FC1 C2C3F1F2 F37F6B7F 3FC2C099   - █ú"ABC123",".Bär
00010     8285933F 40C26A88 947F6B7F E2969485   - bel. Böhm","Some
00020     40E2A399 8585A37F 6B7FE296 948540C3   - Street","Some C
00030     89A3A87F 6B7FC785 99948195 A87F6B7F   - ity","Germany","
00040     7F6B7FF4 F0F7F2F1 7F6BF1F0 F0F04BF0   - ","40721",1000.0
00050     F0250040 40404040 40404040 40404040   - 0..
            -- that is fine. LF = x'25' in EBCDIC

I do not understand the last bytes of example 1 and 2. CRLF in UCS-2 should be x'240D' (CR) and x'240A' (LF), shouldn't it?

How could we get the length of the buffer returned by fgets()?

Thomas.

Am 05.05.2020 um 18:07 schrieb Vernon Hamberg:

I agree, Thomas.

UTF-8 has distinct byte patterns that identify them as UTF-8 - single bytes go up to 7F, that's the Basic Latin group on that site.

One can scan through a UTF-8 text. Whenever you encounter a byte greater or equal to X'80', you have a UTF-8 character - some are 2 bytes, some 3, some 4. Those of 2 bytes start with x'C?', etc.

Greg mentions that he changed the file CCSID to 1208, and WRKLNK handles it better - I saw that here when faced with emojis from people's iPhones. Our solution at the time - 3 years ago - was to use SQL's XMLTABLE - it knows what it doesn't know and gives you a placeholder - one of our developers looks like he wants to use substitute strings - I don't know how you keep up with that, but maybe he can. UTF-8 is such a moving target in some respects, especially emoji-like things. Do you replace the MOUSE FACE with the words in the message?

Regards
Vern

On 5/5/2020 8:40 AM, Thomas Raddatz wrote:

Hi Vern,

I did not notice the drop down for switching between the different code planes of UTF-8. Hence I did not find the RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK earlier.

x'F3' is the same that I get for RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK when I call CSVDEMO for a VSC file that contains that character. So that is the same a SQL.

I do not tink there is a nice solution for Greg. The only thing I have in mind is reading the CSV data as UTF8 and then replace character not available in EBCDIC. At the end convert the resulting UTF8 string to EBCDIC and continue with splitting the row into parts.

Thomas

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: RPG400-L [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Im Auftrag von Vernon Hamberg
Gesendet: Dienstag, 5. Mai 2020 08:59
An: RPG programming on IBM i
Betreff: 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