Format of the Mainframe file: ascii/binary/ebcdic

richie · New User Joined: 11 Jun 2005 Posts: 24

Hi,

How do we know the format of a MF flat file whether its ascii/binary/ebcdic.

Thanks

expat · Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 2:44 pm

You need to talk to the programmer responsible for writing the program that is creating the file to get the exact file structure and attributes.

murmohk1 · Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 2:47 pm

richie,

Phrzby Phil · Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 5:33 pm

First of all, everything is actually in binary. This is just base 2 coding.

The question about ASCII or EBCDIC pertains to which binary (or, equivalently, hex) bit sequences represent which display characters.

IBM mainframes use the EBCDIC coding system, but one can certainly store ASCII coded data. If you do so, however, your processing programs must know to convert.

SAS has ASCII conversion format codes, so that is one way to convert should you be given some ASCII data on mainframe but need to convert to the standard EBCDIC.