Very Computer

Hi. Does anyone know a tool out there that can convert "packed" EBCDIC
data file
into ASCII ? I'm receiving this data from MVS, and doing the conversion
on Solaris 2.5.1. Any help provided would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

Steve

The utility "dd" does EBCDIC to ASCII conversion, with the argu-
ment conv=ascii (or possibly conv=ibm).  If you're converting
fixed-length records, such as card images, use cbs=N, where N
is the size of a record, to convert fixed-length to plain text.
Do "man dd" for more options and details.

--
Chris Green
Advanced Technology Center
Laguna Hills, California

When you say "packed EBCDIC", do you mean the records contain packed
decimal, defined in COBOL as COMP-3?  If so, you might not want to convert
the entire record but only selected fields representing alphanumeric data
within the program that reads it.  If not, a utility like 'dd' can convert
it for you.

:)Hi. Does anyone know a tool out there that can convert "packed" EBCDIC
:)data file
:)into ASCII ? I'm receiving this data from MVS, and doing the conversion
:)on Solaris 2.5.1. Any help provided would be greatly appreciated.
:)Thanks.

  If you data contains "packed" decimal, you have to write a custom
  program to convert the data.

:)Steve

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Use `dd conv=ascii'. Youmay need to adjust the `ibs='  and/or  `cbs='
options to your exact packing format.

Wolfgang

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ATTENTION: Despite Any Other Listing of Product Contents Found  Here-
on, the Consumer is Advised That, in Actuality, This Product Consists
Of 99.9999999999% Empty Space.

Packed decimal is really a binary data format used on MVS systems
rather than EBCDIC data as such. You can't translate it byte by byte
to ASCII. The translation process needs to know the layout of the
fields in the data.

It may be easier to output the data in EBCDIC text form on the MVS
system, as programs there have easy ways of dealing with packed data.
The size of the data will expand, but it will be much easier to
translate pure text data.

---
Andrew Rowley