What is EBCDIC?
Based on 8-bit binary code, EBCDIC was developed to facilitate data entry on computers using punch cards to store data. The encoding scheme, despite being developed in the 1960’s, is still being used primarily on IBM mainframe computers and operating systems. EBCDIC still survives mostly for backwards compatibility reasons as a large number of corporations still use EBCDIC to access legacy applications and databases. Interacting with a large and established technology and consulting corporation like IBM is, thus, an issue of interoperability. An ideal method for exchanging files between a non-IBM system and an IBM mainframe is conversion. If you’re working on a non-IBM system, the best option is convert simple NIX or PC ASCII text files into EBCDIC files. Being universally recognized across all platforms, an ASCII text file ensures that you can interact with EBCDIC data and make that content accessible. Converting Between EBCDIC And ASCII With iConv To convert between the two formats,
EBCDIC (Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code) is a character encoding set used by IBM mainframes. Unlike virtually every computer system in the world which uses a variant of ASCII, IBM mainframes and midrange systems such as the AS/400 tend to use a wholly incompatible character set primarily designed for ease of use on punched cards. (For an excellent page on punched cards, see Doug Jones’s Punched Card Codes). EBCDIC uses the full 8 bits available to it, so parity checking cannot be used on an 8 bit system. Also, EBCDIC has a wider range of control characters than ASCII. The character encoding is based on Binary Coded Decimal (BCD), so the contiguous characters in the alphanumeric range are formed up in blocks of up to 10 from 0000 binary to 1001 binary. Non alphanumeric characters are almost all outside the BCD range. There are four main blocks in the EBCDIC code page: 0000 0000 to 0011 1111 is reserved for control characters; 0100 0000 to 0111 1111 are for punctuation; 10
