Extremely relevant, as Paul F. pointed out in his reply to me. Failure to completely RTFM on my part. Mea culpa.
“Alphanumeric” is not too restrictive; AFAIK that term has always included ALL binary character values, not just alphabetic and numeric, so all punctuation and even “control” values (less than the value of a SPACE character) are allowed. My guess now is that my “idea” will be rejected as “function already available”, which it is. Peter From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Paul Gilmartin Sent: Saturday, January 3, 2026 1:57 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Please vote for COBOL "idea" for reverse character translation On Fri, 2 Jan 2026 18:56:13 +0000, Farley, Peter wrote: >Currently Enterprise COBOL allows PIC X alphanumeric EBCDIC group and >elementary items to MOVE to UTF-8 (PIC U) and NATIONAL (PIC N) group and >elementary items with automatic character set translation, but the reverse >MOVE is not allowed. �There is no technical reason why the reverse MOVE should >not be allowed, since the character set translation logic is already in place >for a PIC X MOVE into PIC U and PIC N. > ... Is this relevant: <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cobol-zos/6.5.0?topic=cobol-converting-from-utf-8-unicode-representation__;!!Ebr-cpPeAnfNniQ8HSAI-g_K5b7VKg!OZIq1MM33NpZ6H5CIG_Zkkwxg1u296SY8WhWJy_oj0ZPQ-C4R1Fs5CTo23TQD0hsP9MiPjT_FYjeIx-_fXgOit60sB22hsIbUDdS-8-1$<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.ibm.com/docs/en/cobol-zos/6.5.0?topic=cobol-converting-from-utf-8-unicode-representation__;!!Ebr-cpPeAnfNniQ8HSAI-g_K5b7VKg!OZIq1MM33NpZ6H5CIG_Zkkwxg1u296SY8WhWJy_oj0ZPQ-C4R1Fs5CTo23TQD0hsP9MiPjT_FYjeIx-_fXgOit60sB22hsIbUDdS-8-1$>> You can explicitly convert UTF-16 data to UTF-8 data and UTF-8 data to alphanumeric data by using the DISPLAY-OF intrinsic function. You can also explicitly convert UTF-8 data to UTF-16 data by using the NATIONAL-OF intrinsic function. When using the DISPLAY-O F intrinsic function to convert UTF-16 to UTF-8, you must specify an output code page of 1208. "alphanumeric" sounds restrictive. What about special characters? >I have a bit more detail on the subject in the "idea" summary, please read >those details at the "ideas" page and vote for it. > >https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://ideas.ibm.com/ideas/COBOLVUE-I-427__;!!Ebr-cpPeAnfNniQ8HSAI-g_K5b7VKg!OZIq1MM33NpZ6H5CIG_Zkkwxg1u296SY8WhWJy_oj0ZPQ-C4R1Fs5CTo23TQD0hsP9MiPjT_FYjeIx-_fXgOit60sB22hsIbUO3DDpUK$<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/ideas.ibm.com/ideas/COBOLVUE-I-427__;!!Ebr-cpPeAnfNniQ8HSAI-g_K5b7VKg!OZIq1MM33NpZ6H5CIG_Zkkwxg1u296SY8WhWJy_oj0ZPQ-C4R1Fs5CTo23TQD0hsP9MiPjT_FYjeIx-_fXgOit60sB22hsIbUO3DDpUK$> > >TIA for your votes. -- This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
