(recode.info)EBCDIC

---

Next: IBM-PC Prev: IBM and MS Up: IBM and MS

---

Enter node , (file) or (file)node

EBCDIC code
===========

   This charset is the IBM's External Binary Coded Decimal for
Interchange Coding.  This is an eight bits code.  The following three
variants were implemented in `recode' independently of RFC 1345:

`EBCDIC'
     In `recode', the `us..ebcdic' conversion is identical to `dd
     conv=ebcdic' conversion, and `recode' `ebcdic..us' conversion is
     identical to `dd conv=ascii' conversion.  This charset also
     represents the way Control Data Corporation relates EBCDIC to
     8-bits ASCII.

`EBCDIC-CCC'
     In `recode', the `us..ebcdic-ccc' or `ebcdic-ccc..us' conversions
     represent the way Concurrent Computer Corporation (formerly Perkin
     Elmer) relates EBCDIC to 8-bits ASCII.

`EBCDIC-IBM'
     In `recode', the `us..ebcdic-ibm' conversion is _almost_ identical
     to the GNU `dd conv=ibm' conversion.  Given the exact `dd
     conv=ibm' conversion table, `recode' once said:

          Codes  91 and 213 both recode to 173
          Codes  93 and 229 both recode to 189
          No character recodes to  74
          No character recodes to 106

     So I arbitrarily chose to recode 213 by 74 and 229 by 106.  This
     makes the `EBCDIC-IBM' recoding reversible, but this is not
     necessarily the best correction.  In any case, I think that GNU
     `dd' should be amended.  `dd' and `recode' should ideally agree on
     the same correction.  So, this table might change once again.

   RFC 1345 brings into `recode' 15 other EBCDIC charsets, and 21 other
charsets having EBCDIC in at least one of their alias names.  You can
get a list of all these by executing:

     recode -l | grep -i ebcdic

   Note that `recode' may convert a pure stream of EBCDIC characters,
but it does not know how to handle binary data between records which is
sometimes used to delimit them and build physical blocks.  If end of
lines are not marked, fixed record size may produce something readable,
but `VB' or `VBS' blocking is likely to yield some garbage in the
converted results.