ASCII to EBCDIC Conversion Table Example

See the following ASCII to EBCDIC table. The EBCDIC to ASCII table works the same way.

Each ASCII or EBCDIC character is represented by 2 hexadecimal digits. For example, ASCII character E is hexadecimal 45 or X'45'. So to find the location of the ASCII character E within the table, you can go down to row 4. The second hexadecimal digit is 5, so you can move across to column 5. The point at which they meet is the hexadecimal value X'C5'. This means the hexadecimal EBCDIC value for E is X'C5'. If you want the E to be represented by a different EBCDIC hexadecimal value you can edit this value in this table. When a transfer is competed and the data is converted to EBCDIC, the new value is used.

Note: The ASCII character set in the default table supports the extended ASCII range which covers special characters outside the English alphabet. For standard ASCII support, you can use the comtblg.classic file. To replace the default table, you can rename the existing comtblg.dat file, and then rename the existing comtblg.classic file to become the new comtblg.dat file. The conversion tables do not support multibyte character sets.

For other conversions besides standard ASCII to EBCDIC conversion, you can copy the default comtblg.dat file to create new customized tables of your own. You can assign conversion tables to the nodes. For more information, see Transfers Using Nodes.

Note: You must always replace a 2-digit hexadecimal number with a 2-digit hexadecimal number. If the table is invalid, conversion cannot be performed. The table consists of two sections with 16 lines each, therefore the entire file must have 32 lines across and 32 lines down. If it contains anything else, it does not work.