Character Data Type

The character data type represents character values and may have any of the following formats:

A
Character, also referred to as "alphanumeric"
N
Indicator
G
Graphic
C
UCS-2

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 Start of changeSee CCSID of data in character format for information on the CCSID of data in character format.End of change
Indicator One single-byte character that is fixed in length Start of changeSee CCSID of data in indicator format for information on the CCSID of indicator data.End of change
Graphic One or more double-byte characters that are fixed or variable in length Start of change65535 (*HEX) or a CCSID with the EBCDIC double-byte encoding scheme (x'1200').End of change
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.