File Management - IBM

Appendix B. Double-byte character set support
This appendix contains information that you need if you use double-byte
characters. This includes the following topics:
v Double-byte character set (DBCS) fundamentals
v Processing double-byte characters
v Device file support
v Display support
v Copying files that contain double-byte characters
v Writing application programs that process double-byte characters
v DBCS font tables
v DBCS sort tables
v DBCS conversion dictionaries
v Using DBCS conversion
DBCS printer and spooling support information can be found in the Printer Device
Programming book.
Double-byte character set fundamentals
Some languages, such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, have a writing scheme
that uses many different characters that cannot be represented with single-byte
codes. To create coded character sets for such languages, the system uses two bytes
to represent each character. Characters that are encoded in two-byte code are called
double-byte characters.
Figure 17 on page 198 shows alphanumeric characters coded in a single-byte code
scheme and double-byte characters coded in a double-byte code scheme.
You can use double-byte characters as well as single-byte characters in one
application. For instance, you may want to store double-byte data and single-byte
data in your database, create your display screens with double-byte text and fields,
or print reports with double-byte characters.
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