space pad character on OS/390 = ASCII space

cloggieroo · Post by **cloggieroo** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 4:33 am

Hello All,
Have come up with an unusual situation when using Mercator map on OS/390. In the type tree (generated on Windows), we specify pad character of spaces, with a minumum of 1 and a maximum of n (pad to n).

When the map (generated for OS/390) and FTP'd to mainframe is used, the pad character becomes hex 20 (space in ASCII) not hex 40 (space in EBCDIC). Can anyone tell me why? We tried to specify <<40>> in the type tree as the pad character, but the type tree errored and said that 'the pad character must only be one character in length'.

We have a work around (we identify 'b' as pad character) and this ensures that the correct pad character is used on the mainframe(?), but it's driving me nuts not knowing why the wrong pad character is used. Am I holding my mouth wrong, or have I found an 'undocumented feature"?

Kind regards to all

janhess · Post by **janhess** » Wed Sep 22, 2004 2:59 am

By default the Data Language is set to Native in the Type Tree. I would have expected an EBCDIC representation of space when compiled for that type of platform.
You could probably get round it by explicitly setting Data Language to EBCDIC but it sounds like a bug to me.

cloggieroo · Post by **cloggieroo** » Fri Sep 24, 2004 6:44 am

janhess wrote:By default the Data Language is set to Native in the Type Tree. I would have expected an EBCDIC representation of space when compiled for that type of platform.
You could probably get round it by explicitly setting Data Language to EBCDIC but it sounds like a bug to me.

Thanks Jan for the reply. We tried to explicity set EBCDIC in the type tree but that did not work either. It only rears it's ugly head when there is no data in the field, and you specify pad. I'm starting to believe it is a bug also.