WJK has solved this!
I checked the letter "A" and it mapped correctly according to the Quick Reference tables linked to below.
"-" in ASCII maps to DC4 (device control 4) in EBCDIC!
No wonder X12 likes to express money as an absolute value with a separate sign indicator.
If you try to send a negative number from ASCII to EBCDIC, you won't get the sign character through conversion.
Thanks WJK and Brooks Knight and the others who replied. It would have remained an unsolved mystery.
Anthony Beecher
Manager of Vendor Systems
buy.com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: William J. Kammerer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2000 12:36 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: ASCII - EBCDIC conversion issue
>
>
> Anthony Beecher asked "Does anyone know where in IBM System
> 370 they can
> look for the character conversion application and its rules?" even
> though http://www.primefactors.com/inside/FaqDesEdi.html
> says "there is no standardly accepted translation table."
>
> Dear Anthony:
>
> Besides Prime Factors' bad grammar, their information may be
> bad, also.
> Take a look at Appendix E, Translation tables, in IBM's Information
> Exchange via TCP/IP FTP Gateway User's Guide, Order number
> GC34-2345-01,
> at http://edi.services.ibm.com/ie/publications.shtml. There
> are tables
> for EBCDIC to ASCII conversion, and vice versa. It looks
> like the same
> information is available in HTML at the University of Illinois at
> Urbana/Champaign in their Quick Reference tables at
> http://www.uiuc.edu/ccso/pubs/all/qr/QR_0.8table2.html.
>
> I was hoping that this would be my last posting to EDI-L
> before I dumped
> all this e-commerce and EDI stuff once and for all. I wanted to be a
> big-shot Senator with a mahogany office, interns, and a
> reserved parking
> spot under the Capitol, but the voters are fickle and fate
> has not been
> kind. Fortunately, I didn't quit my day job, and plan to trudge ahead
> until my next chance comes. See the results at
> http://www.wbns10tv.com/leader/race1516.htm. The Ohio 16th
> is about as
> single-party as Albania, where the last Democrat was seen in
> 1964. The
> big-moneyed interests, I tell you, have once more thwarted
> our hopes and
> dreams for freedom and liberty; see "Mead outspends Kammerer
> 92-to-1 in
> 16th Senate race" at
> http://www.snponline.com/ELECTION2000/all16senate2.htm
>
> William J. Kammerer
> FORESIGHT Corp.
> 4950 Blazer Memorial Pkwy.
> Dublin, OH USA 43017-3305
> +1 614 791-1600
>
> Visit FORESIGHT Corp. at http://www.foresightcorp.com/
> "Commerce for a New World"
>
> ==============================================================
> =========
> To signoff the EDI-L list, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To subscribe,
> mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To contact the list owner: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Archives at http://www.mail-archive.com/edi-l%40listserv.ucop.edu/
>
