You can implicitly or explicitly convert data items to national (UTF-16) representation.
You can implicitly convert alphabetic, alphanumeric, DBCS, or integer data to national data by using the MOVE statement. Implicit conversions also take place in other COBOL statements, such as IF statements that compare an alphanumeric data item with a data item that has USAGE NATIONAL.
You can explicitly convert to and from national data items by using the intrinsic functions NATIONAL-OF and DISPLAY-OF, respectively. By using these intrinsic functions, you can specify a code page for the conversion that is different from the code page that is in effect with the CODEPAGE compiler option.
related tasks
Converting alphanumeric, DBCS, and integer to national (MOVE)
Converting alphanumeric or DBCS to national (NATIONAL-OF)
Converting national to alphanumeric (DISPLAY-OF)
Overriding the default code page
Comparing national (UTF-16) data
related references
CODEPAGE
Conversion exceptions