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Status Delivered
Workspace COBOL Compilers
Created by Guest
Created on Aug 8, 2013

RELATED IDEAS

UTF-8 Literal Support for COBOL

In COBOL it is possible to have EBCDIC string literals with z'Literal', UTF-16 literals with n'Literal'.
With the new Enhancements for UTF-8 Support in COBOL we need UTF-8 Literals, e.g. u'Literal'.
Coding UTF-8 Literals with hex codes is error prune and makes the source unreadable, if you add comments, they might not match the hex Literal.

Idea priority Urgent
  • Admin
    Basil Kanneth
    Reply
    |     Mar 6, 2023

    We delivered support for UTF-8 literals in Enterprise COBOL 6.3. Marking this Idea as 'Delivered'

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     May 6, 2020

    This is a duplicate of RFE 63363

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Sep 14, 2015

    Due to processing by IBM, this request was reassigned to have the following updated attributes:
    Brand - Servers and Systems Software
    Product family - Programming Languages
    Product - COBOL Compilers

    For recording keeping, the previous attributes were:
    Brand - Rational
    Product family - Design & development
    Product - COBOL Compilers

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Aug 19, 2013

    Strings in Java are UTF-16, not UTF-8, and COBOL automatically handles parameters for COBOL - Java interoperability. You are correct, you should never code hex literals for UTF-8, you should convert EBCDIC literals into UTF-16, or convert EBCDIC literals into UTF-8 to make your code readable.
    On the other hand, UTF-8 literals could be useful. (In any case, conversion will occur at runtime, since your program source is EBCDIC)

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