User-defined words with multibyte characters
When used in the context of user-defined words, the term multibyte
refers to words
formed using at least one character that is
encoded using two or more bytes, possibly combined with single byte
characters.
The following are the rules for forming user-defined words with multibyte
characters:
- Contained characters
- A
user-defined word can consist of both single-byte and multibyte characters.
If a character exists in both single-byte and multibyte forms, its
single-byte and multibyte representations are not equivalent.
The single-byte characters in the user-defined word are limited to
the following characters:
- Latin letters uppercase A through Z
- Latin letters lowercase a through z
- digits 0 through 9
- - (hyphen)
The single-byte encoded hyphen cannot appear as the first or last
character in such words.
- Uppercase and lowercase letters
- In COBOL words, each lowercase single-byte encoded character
“a” through “z” is considered to be equivalent to its
corresponding single-byte encoded uppercase character.
Multibyte-encoded uppercase and lowercase letters are
not equivalent.
- Value range
- Valid value
ranges for multibyte characters depend on the specific code page being
used.
- Maximum length
- 30 bytes. The number of characters that you can specify
in 30 bytes varies depending on the source code page and the characters used
in the user-defined word.
- Continuation
- Words formed with multibyte characters cannot be continued across lines.
- Use of shift-out and shift-in characters
- Applicable only when the
dummy shift-out/shift-in (SOSI) compiler option is in effect. See the
COBOL for Windows Programming Guide
for the details of the SOSI compiler option.
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