Rational Developer for System z
COBOL for Windows, Version 7.5, Programming Guide


Fixing differences caused by data representations

To ensure the same behavior for your programs, you should understand the differences in certain ways of representing data, and take appropriate action.

COBOL stores signed packed-decimal data in the same manner on both the mainframe and the workstation. However, external-decimal, floating-point, binary, and unsigned packed-decimal data are by default represented differently. Character data might be represented differently, depending on the USAGE clause that describes data items and the locale that is in effect at run time.

Most programs behave the same on the workstation and the mainframe regardless of the data representation.

related tasks
Handling differences in ASCII SBCS and EBCDIC SBCS characters
Handling differences in native and nonnative formats
Handling differences in IEEE and hexadecimal data
Handling differences in ASCII DBCS and EBCDIC DBCS strings

related references
Data representation


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