Converting files between code pages

z/OS is an EBCDIC platform. It has devices that are configured for EBCDIC; it also has programs that are compiled to handle the EBCDIC encoding of characters. If you implement Enhanced ASCII or exploit Unicode Services, the basic EBCDIC nature of a z/OS platform remains. For example, the z/OS shell and utilities continue to be EBCDIC programs. However, if C programs have been compiled as ASCII, the EBCDIC nature can be partially hidden.

Before Enhanced ASCII and Unicode Services were available, you could use iconv to convert characters from one code page set to another. The converted text is written to standard input (stdout).

C programs that have been compiled as ASCII use ASCII locales. These ASCII locales are produced by using the -A option of localedef.