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


Processing data in an international environment

COBOL for Windows supports Unicode UTF-16 as national character data at run time. UTF-16 provides a consistent and efficient way to encode plain text. Using UTF-16, you can develop software that will work with various national languages.

Use these COBOL facilities to code and compile programs that process national data and culturally sensitive collation orders for such data:

You can also take advantage of implicit conversions of alphanumeric or DBCS data items to national representation. The compiler performs such conversions (in most cases) when you move these items to national data items, or compare these items with national data items.

related concepts
Unicode and the encoding of language characters
National groups

related tasks
Using national data (Unicode) in COBOL
Converting to or from national (Unicode) representation
Processing UTF-8 data
Processing Chinese GB 18030 data
Comparing national (UTF-16) data
Coding for use of DBCS support
Setting the locale

related references
COBOL statements and national data
Intrinsic functions and national data
NCOLLSEQ
NSYMBOL
Classes and categories of data (COBOL for Windows Language Reference)
Data categories and PICTURE rules (COBOL for Windows Language Reference)
MOVE statement (COBOL for Windows Language Reference)
General relation conditions (COBOL for Windows Language Reference)


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