How to check ASCII in a string

bittu · New User Joined: 07 Jan 2007 Posts: 19 Location: Bangalore

Hi,

How do we check whether a string contains all ASCII characters in a COBOL program?

Thanks

enrico-sorichetti · Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 12:36 pm

in standard/old ascii only values 000-127 are valid
in extended ascii all 256 bit configurations are valid

the best approximation You can have,
according to encoding convention, is to find out if the string is printable
but as usual You have to express Your requirement better

bittu · New User Joined: 07 Jan 2007 Posts: 19 Location: Bangalore

Thanks to all.
Below is the explaination abt this requirement:
I need to read a value in to a Working storage variable from an input file. How do I check whether the value(say "FRANCE") in the variable is made up of ASCII charcaters?

Thanks

Robert Sample · Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 5:09 pm

I think some real thought needs to be given to this requirement. For example, you have a variable that has one character in it; that character's hexadecimal value is 4E (78 decimal). In EBCDIC that is a plus sign but in ASCII it is an upper case N. Which way you refer to it depends on how you want to use it -- there is absolutely no inherent meaning to the character.

So in general, you cannot tell automatically if a given variable has EBCDIC or ASCII data in it since each character represents BOTH an ASCII value as well as an EBCDIC value. If I see a batch of hex '40' values in the variable I'm going to suspect EBCDIC whereas a batch of hex '20' values means I'm going to be thinking ASCII -- but I've seen cases where both of those assumptions are wrong.

dick scherrer · Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 8:59 pm

Hello,