DBCS and SAS on a Mainframe

Another type of DBCS encoding exists on mainframe systems, which combine DBCS support with the 3270-style data stream. Each DBCS character string is surrounded by escape codes called shift out/shift in, or SO/SI. These codes originated from the need for the old-style printers to shift out from the EBCDIC character set, to the DBCS character set. The major manufacturers have different encodings for SO/SI; some manufacturers pad DBCS code with one byte of shift code information while others pad the DBCS code with two bytes of shift code information. These differences can cause problems in reading DBCS information about mainframes.
PCs, minicomputers, and workstations do not have SO/SI but have their own types of DBCS encodings that differ from manufacturer to manufacturer. SAS has several formats and informats that can read DBCS on SO/SI systems:
SAS Formats and Informats That Support DBCS on SO/SI Systems
Keyword
Language Element
Description
$KANJI
informat
Removes SO/SI from Japanese kanji DBCS
$KANJIX
informat
Adds SO/SI to Japanese kanji DBCS
$KANJI
format
Adds SO/SI to Japanese kanji DBCS
$KANJIX
format
Removes SO/SI from Japanese kanji DBCS