If your program processes a QSAM ASCII file, you must request the ASCII alphabet, define the record formats, and define the ddname (with JCL).
In addition, if your program processes signed numeric data items from ASCII files, define the numeric data as zoned decimal items with separate signs, that is, as USAGE DISPLAY and with the SEPARATE phrase of the SIGN clause.
The CODEPAGE compiler option has no effect on the code page used for conversions between ASCII and EBCDIC for ASCII tape support. See the z/OS DFSMS documentation for information about how CCSIDs used for the ASCII tape support are selected and what the default CCSIDs are.
Requesting the ASCII alphabet: In the SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph, code STANDARD-1 for ASCII:
ALPHABET-NAME IS STANDARD-1
In the FD entry for the file, code:
CODE-SET IS ALPHABET-NAME
Defining the record formats: Process QSAM ASCII tape files with any of these record formats:
If you use variable-length records, you cannot explicitly code format D; instead, code RECORDING MODE V. The format information is internally converted to D mode. D-mode records have a 4-byte record descriptor for each record.
Defining the ddname: Under z/OS, processing ASCII files requires special JCL coding. Code these subparameters of the DCB parameter in the DD statement:
Use this value if you coded BLOCK CONTAINS 0.
related tasks
Processing ASCII file labels
related references
z/OS DFSMS: Using Data Sets (Character data conversion)