Supported Character Sets › Code Page Selection › DEC Character Code Page

DEC Character Code Page

On an &DECODE operation, if the TRANSLATE=DEC operand is specified, all character strings are assumed to be from the DEC character set shown in the following table and are translated to their equivalents in the EBCDIC character set. An &ENCODE operation, however, assumes the character strings to be from the EBCDIC character set, and translates them from their equivalents in the DEC character set shown in the following table.

Items marked with an asterisk (*) in the table are as follows:

Columns 0 to 1 (code points 00 to 1F) contain a set of 32 control characters. On an &DECODE operation, those characters without an equivalent in the EBCDIC character set are translated to NULLS (X'00'). Similarly, on an &ENCODE operation, EBCDIC control characters without an equivalent in this code page are translated to the DEC NULL character (X'00').

Columns 2 to 7 (code points 20 to 7F) and columns A to F (code points A0 to AF) contain graphic characters. On an &DECODE operation, those characters without an equivalent in the EBCDIC character set are translated to SPACEs (X'40'). On an &ENCODE operation, EBCDIC graphic characters without an equivalent in this code page are translated to the DEC SPACE character (X'20').

Columns 8 to 9 (code points 80 to 9F) are control character code points not defined for this character code page. If they appear on an &DECODE operation, they are translated to the EBCDIC NULL character (X'00').