The character data type represents character values and may have any of the following formats:
Character data may contain one or more single-byte or double-byte characters, depending on the format specified. Character, graphic, and UCS-2 fields can also have either a fixed or variable-length format. The following table summarizes the different character data-type formats.
| Character Data Type | Number of Bytes | CCSID |
|---|---|---|
| Character | One or more single-byte characters that are fixed or variable in length | See CCSID of data in character format for information
on the CCSID of data in character format.![]() |
| Indicator | One single-byte character that is fixed in length | See CCSID of data in indicator format for information
on the CCSID of indicator data.![]() |
| Graphic | One or more double-byte characters that are fixed or variable in length | 65535 (*HEX) or a CCSID with the EBCDIC double-byte
encoding scheme (x'1200').![]() |
| UCS-2 | One or more double-byte characters that are fixed or variable in length | 13488 or a CCSID with the UCS-2 encoding scheme (X'7200') such as 1200 (*UTF16). |
For information on the CCSIDs of character data, see Conversion between Character, Graphic and UCS-2 Data.