Characters are stored
in a computer using a “character encoding scheme” that
maps the individual characters to binary integers. The two most commonly
used single-byte character encoding schemes are ASCII and EBCDIC.
IBM mainframe computers use the EBCDIC encoding, which contains representations
for 256 characters. Each character has a unique representation, a
binary integer from 0 to 256 (x'FF').
The previous paragraph
contains a simplified overview of character encoding, ASCII, and EBCDIC.
There are multiple forms of ASCII and multiple forms of EBCDIC.
Often, these encodings are referred to as “code pages.”
The different EBCDIC code pages generally represent common characters,
like letters and numbers, with the same code. However, the code pages
use different codes for less common characters.
The following table
shows the EBCDIC code for commonly used characters. These representations
are correct for all EBCDIC code pages.
EBCDIC Code: Commonly Used Characters